
Class. 
Book. 



PRESENTED 15Y 



PRIMEVAL MAN 



PRIMEVAL MAN 



^tit femhtatictt d twmz %mxit ^ptwhihm 



By the DUKE OF ARGYLL 



NEW YORK : 

GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, 

416, BROOME STREET. 

1869 







London : 
R. Clay, Softs, and Taylor, Printers. 
Bread Street Hill. 



P. 

Roland P. Fallow 

llja'01 



PREFACE. 

PAVING now no immediate pros- 
pect of being able to expand or 
to illustrate the argument contained in the 
following pages, I republish it with very 
little alteration from the form in which 
it originally appeared in " Good Words/' 
I am well aware how much it requires 
both expansion and illustration. But I 
hope that at least the main lines of that 
argument are traced with sufficient 
clearness to enable others with more 



VI PREFACE. 



leisure to pursue them farther, and to 
test the results arrived at by our 
growing knowledge in the sciences 
which bear upon the early condition 
of Mankind. The distinctions here 
taken between different branches of 
the subject, have not, so far as I know, 
been elsewhere laid down with adequate 
precision. Yet all safe reasoning depends 
upon such distinctions being carefully 
observed. If they are sound, they place 
an insuperable bar in the way of cer- 
tain conclusions respecting Primeval Man, 
which have been too hastily assumed 
as following from recently discovered 
facts. At all events these conclusions 



PREFACE. Vll 



can only be reached by new arguments 
and by new methods of proof. 

Many of the questions which are in- 
volved in the reasoning of this Essay, 
are questions which touch upon the pro- 
foundest problems of our nature and of 
our history : — On the connection, seem- 
ingly inseparable, between all mental 
phenomena and physical organization ; on 
the truthfulness of any system of classifi- 
cation which does not take equal cogni- 
zance of both; on the distinction between 
intellectual powers and moral character ; 
on the distinction, again, between the 
mere results of accumulated knowledge, 
and the working of the original facul- 



Vlll PREFACE. 



ties of Reason ; on the question how- 
far the first use and the first direction 
of his mental powers may have been 
as purely instinctive in Man as in the 
Bee or in the Beaver ; on the relation 
between the two tendencies in Man to 
advance and to decline ; on the causes 
of degradation which are born with him 
and seem to be inseparable from his 
nature ; on the bearing upon the whole 
argument of existing facts respecting his 
distribution on the globe, and the obvious 
effects upon him of hardship and of 
suffering to produce, or to intensify, a 
barbarous condition ; — on each and all of 
these questions, which enter into the 



PREFACE. IX 



reasoning of this Essay, whole volumes 
might be written without exhausting 
what is to be said upon them. I shall 
be content, in the meantime, if this 
slight sketch of so great a subject 
should be of any use in directing others 
into some well-defined paths of thought 
and of investigation in regard to it. 



London, Dec. 9, 1868. 



CONTENTS. 



PART I. 

PAGE 
INTRODUCTORY ... I 



PART II. 
THE ORIGIN OF MAN 38 

PART III. 
THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 76 

PART IV. 
MAN'S PRIMITIVE CONDITION 129 



PART I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

A T the meeting, in 1867, of the British 
Association for the Advancement of 
Science, a paper was read by Sir J. 
Lubbock upon "The Early Condition of 
Mankind." It purports to be a reply to 
a lecture on the " Origin of Civilization" by 
Dr. Whately, the late Archbishop of Dublin, 
which was published in 1854 The Arch- 
bishop's position is shortly this, — that mere 
savages — that is to say, "men in the lowest 
degree, or even anything approaching to the 

B 



PRIMEVAL MAN. 



lowest degree, of barbarism in which they can 
possibly subsist at all — never did and never 
can, unaided, raise themselves into a higher 
condition ; " that even when they are brought 
into contact with superior races, it is ex- 
tremely difficult to teach them the simplest 
arts ; that they " seem never to invent or 
discover anything," because even "necessity 
is not the mother of invention except to those 
who have some degree of thoughtfulness and 
intelligence;" that whatever the natural 
powers of the human mind may be, they 
require to have some instruction from with- 
out wherewith to start. He holds it to 
be "a complete moral certainty that men 
left unassisted in what is called a state of 
nature — that is, with the faculties Man is born 



WHATELY S ARGUMENT. 



with not at all unfolded or exercised by- 
education — never did, and never can, raise 
themselves from that condition." Therefore, 
" according to the present course of things, 
the first introducer of civilization among 
savages is, and must be, man in a more 
improved state." But as " in the beginning 
of the human race there was no man to 
effect it," this must have been the work of 
another Being. '■' There must have been, in 
short, something of a revelation made to the 
first or to some subsequent generation of our 
species." The conclusion is that, as Man 
must have had a Divine Creator, it seems 
equally certain that, to some extent also, 
he must have had a Divine Instructor. 

This is the argument which Sir J. Lubbock 
B 2 



PRIMEVAL MAX. 



has undertaken to refute. His conclusion is, 
that the " primitive condition of mankind was 
one of utter barbarism ; " that from this con- 
dition certain races have independently raised 
themselves ; and, of course, that, instead of 
existing savages being the degenerate descen- 
dants of ancestors who were more advanced, 
all races now civilized are the children of 
men who were once in the same low con- 
dition. A further conclusion, though not 
formally asserted, is plainly indicated, viz. this, 
— that the "utter barbarism" of the first man 
was itself an advance on the condition of 
some progenitor. I infer that this idea is 
intended to be conveyed when the " first 
men" are explained to mean the "first beings 
worthy to be so called." 



SIR JOHN LUBBOCK S PROPOSITIONS. 5 

The two main lines of argument pursued 
by Sir J. Lubbock connect themselves with 
the two following propositions which he 
undertakes to prove: — 1st, "That there are 
indications of progress even among savages ; " 
and 2d, "That among the most civilized nations 
there are traces of original barbarism." 

Sir J. Lubbock's paper has confirmed an 
impression I have long had, that Whately's 
argument, though strong at some points, is at 
others open to assault ; and that, as a whole, 
the subject now requires to be differently 
handled, and regarded from a different point 
of view. On the other hand, the same paper 
has convinced me that the argument in favour 
of what may be called the Savage-theory is 
very much the weaker of the two, and rests 



PRIMEVAL MAN. 



upon a method of treatment much more in- 
adequate and incomplete. 

I propose in this, and in some following 
chapters, to set forth the reasoning upon 
which these convictions rest. 

There are, however, some preliminary con- 
siderations which it may be well to deal with 
before proceeding farther. 

It will be observed that both arguments 
are avowedly conducted irrespective of any 
belief in the Mosaic narrative of Creation. 
They both profess to be purely scientific ; 
that is, founded on natural knowledge, and 
using for the discovery of truth such facts 
and inferences as are ascertainable by reason. 
Whately expressly says that in his argument 
he has not appealed to the Book of Genesis 



PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS. J 

as an authority, because he "thought it impor- 
tant to show, independently of that authority 
and from a monument actually before our 
eyes — the existence, namely, of civilized man 
— that there is no escaping such conclusions 
as agree with the Bible narrative." The 
opposite argument is, of course, maintained 
always from the same basis of scientific in- 
dependence, and those who urge it do not 
generally profess or care to reconcile the 
conclusion arrived at, with the Mosaic narra- 
tive. Sir J. Lubbock at the close of his paper 
says emphatically, " These views follow, I think, 
from strictly scientific considerations." No 
doubt, if the inquiry is to be pursued at all 
upon this basis, it must be conducted hon- 
estly, and the conclusions legitimately reached 



PRIMEVAL MAN. 



must be accepted with just so much of 
conviction as is justified by the nature of 
the data, and the nature of the reasoning 
employed. 

The question may well arise in many minds 
in reference to this subject, whether it is a 
legitimate subject of speculation at all — 
whether it does not transcend our faculties 
to ascertain the truth. 

Respecting this question, there is one answer 
which is obvious, although it may not go far 
to satisfy those whose scruples are most sin- 
cere. When men in the position of the late 
Archbishop of Dublin enter upon this dis- 
cussion, and declare that, independent of all 
authority, certain conclusions can be shown to 
be unavoidable by natural reason, we cannot 



IS THE DISCUSSION LEGITIMATE? 9 

prohibit others from entering upon the same 
ground, or from producing such arguments as 
they may be able to find in support of an 
opposite conclusion. But there are some 
better arguments than this. This, indeed, 
is enough to show that the discussion must, 
as a matter of necessity, be encountered, 
even though it should be deplored. But other 
considerations may perhaps convince us that 
it ought not to be avoided. It may be true, 
and I believe it to be true, that the desire 
of knowledge is capable of excess. The 
spirit which in the ordinary concerns of 
life is condemned as idle or vicious 
curiosity has, surely, its counterpart in the 
higher pursuits of intellect. David seems to 
imply as much when he pleads in favour of 



10 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

his own character and conduct before God — 
" I do not exercise myself in things too high 
for me." On the other hand, we must remem- 
ber that in nothing has the human race been 
more liable to the delusions of superstition 
than in the conception of the matters which 
were to be held, or were not to be held, as 
forbidden to investigation. Those physical 
laws of nature which are now so familiar to 
us as the peculiar field of observation and 
discovery — a field on which the march of in- 
tellect has been so rapid and so triumphant — 
were once held by the early Greek philo- 
sophers as belonging to the most secret things 
of God. They thought, perhaps not un- 
naturally, that a region which lay, or seemed 
to lie, so much nearer to themselves, even 



METAPHYSICAL SPECULATION. II 

their own mind and spirit — its phenomena 
and its methods of procedure — must be the 
ground most open to their search, and must 
afford results most comprehensible to the 
understanding. And so they plunged into all 
the problems of Metaphysics. But there are 
no mysteries so deep as these — none in which 
the human mind reaches so soon the limit of 
its powers — none in which the temptation is 
stronger to strain after knowledge which is 
shrouded in impenetrable darkness. The 
greatest intellects which the world has ever 
seen have laboured at such problems, and, 
in respect at least to many of them, have 
left them as they found them. The same 
tendency of metaphysical speculation, blend- 
ing, through the school of Alexandria, with 



12 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

the mysticism of the East, infected the 
Theology of the early Church, and heretics 
were not seldom divided from the orthodox 
upon questions which were not only beyond 
the reach of reason, but equally beyond the 
scope of Revelation. In the Confessions of 
St. Augustine there is a curious indication of 
this transposition of the questions which are 
deemed to be the most legitimate, .and the 
most accessible, subjects of our research. In 
early life he had been, as is well known, 
led away by the curious and idle specula- 
tions which pass in ecclesiastical history 
under the name of the Manichaean heresy. 
He pours out his lamentations over the 
subtleties which had once engrossed and 
perplexed his mind — subtleties of which 



AUGUSTINE S DEFINITION. 



Christianity had revealed the folly. And 
among the temptations which he still desires 
to overcome is the appetite of knowledge 
— a "vain and curious desire hiding under 
the name of science " (lib. x. c. 35). This 
is the desire which pretends, he says, to 
reach the inmost secrets of nature — secrets 
which when discovered could have no value, 
and of which men desire and expect no- 
thing except to know. Now, here we have 
an exact definition of the true scientific spirit 
— a spirit which has, indeed, in its results, 
richly " endowed the human family with new 
mercies," but which never has had this dower 
in view as its only, • or even as its chief, 
inducement. It is not perhaps exactly relevant 
to observe that the glorious facts of Astro- 



14 PRIMEVAL MAN. 



nomy are among the secrets of nature which 
Augustine rejoices to say he no longer desires 
to know ; because, in his mind, Astronomy 
took the form of Astrology, to which in his 
youth he had been much addicted. But 
Augustine is right when he detects this same 
love of mere knowledge in the instinctive 
arrest of his attention by the commonest 
works of nature. He desires to be de- 
livered even from this. He has given up 
many pleasures of the eye and curiosities of 
the mind in which he once delighted, — not 
only the transits of the heavenly bodies and 
the response of oracles, but even the public 
spectacles of the Roman world. Still, he 
deplores that this wretched love of mere 
knowledge, — this lust of the eyes, — is ever 



AUGUSTINE'S DESIRE OF KNOWLEDGE. 15 

pursuing him as he walks and lives. Although 
no longer tempted to go to the Amphitheatre 
to see the race of hound and hare, he com- 
plains that the same sight, if seen accidentally 
in the fields, will divert his attention from 
some profound meditation. Even from the 
windows of his home his eye is caught by 
some little lizard catching flies upon the 
wall, or by some spider spreading for the 
capture her wondrous web. The smallness 
of these creatures, he confesses, does not 
diminish his instinctive curiosity. True it 
is that he might pass from these creatures 
to magnify the Creator of them all. But 
he is conscious that this was not present to 
his thoughts when they were arrested and 
fixed upon the things he saw. 



l6 PRIMEVAL MAN. 



Most true ! and equally true was it that 
this desire of knowledge was burning in- 
tensely in him when it wrung from him no 
confession ; or rather, when it was interwoven 
into the very tissue of which his immortal 
Confessions are composed. In them no more 
splendid passages occur than those in which 
he turns the eye of his curiosity inwards 
upon the secrets of his own nature, and asks 
a thousand unanswerable questions on the 
structure and the power of Memory. What 
and where are those innumerable chambers, — 
those vast halls, — which hold in perpetual 
imagery not only all he had ever seen, but 
all he had ever conceived and known ? How 
can the immensities of Time and Space, of 
earth, and sky, and ocean, be thus contained ? 



MEMORY. 17 



How can they be recalled into what seemed 
a lost existence ? What depths and mysteries 
of being ! How little can we understand our- 
selves ! Does it not seem then as if the mind 
were too narrow to comprehend itself? And 
so, through pages of most subtle and eloquent 
analysis, he revels in that faculty of Wonder, 
which is the very root and principle of all 
curious inquiry. I do not say that these 
questions are wholly vain. But they are use- 
ful only as all knowledge may be useful, in 
teaching us — if it be nothing else — how small 
that knowledge is. St. Augustine was right 
in thinking that this wonderful power of 
Memory lies close to the final secrets on 
which our very being and personality depend. 
An eminent philosopher of our own time has 

c 



l8 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

found in Memory the only insuperable diffi- 
culty in the way of reducing the definition of 
ourselves into that of mere " Possibilities of 
Feeling."* But in pursuing these speculations 
into the most inscrutable of all subjects, St. 
Augustine is but following the instincts of the 
same restless and curious intellect which had 
once struggled with the questions, What 
Matter is, and How Evil came to be ? There 
is no inquiry in which the human mind comes 
so immediately to the limit of its powers, as 
in the analysis of itself. Inscrutable questions 
may indeed be asked as to what Man once 
was. But questions much more inscrutable 



* Mr. J. S. Mill. I have discussed elsewhere the logic and 
Tie adequacy of this definition: — "The Reign of Law." Fifth 
Edition. Note D. 



IMPOTENCE OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 19 

may be asked, and are habitually asked, as 
to what Man now is. No conclusions in 
respect to the original condition of our race 
can be more shocking to reason and common 
sense, than many conclusions which meta- 
physicians have pretended to establish respect- 
ing its condition now. 

Another reason against declining this in- 
quiry, is to be found in the fact that the 
plea of impotence against the human under- 
standing, is a plea which may be urged ift 
the service of the most irrational error, as 
easily as, perhaps more easily than, in the 
service of the most certain truths. Men en- 
grossed by some particular theory are under 
immense temptation to denounce the power 
of faculties whose function it is to apprehend 
C 2 



PRIMEVAL MAN. 



ideas differing from their own. At the pre- 
sent moment this is the habitual practice of 
a whole school of thinkers, who have eyes 
for nothing but a particular class of facts, and 
who therefore very naturally resort to the 
assertion that all eyes with a wider range of 
vision are eyes of " phantasy." And if this 
has been sometimes the result of the anatomy 
of Mind, what are we to say of the anatomy 
of the Body ? We cannot even think of our 
bodily frames without encountering at once all 
the facts which connect the phenomena of 
Mind with the structure and condition of 
Material Organs. And then our Organism 
as a whole, how close it stands to that of the 
beasts that perish ! Are we to close these 
paths of investigation also, because some 



MANY FORMS OF PRIESTCRAFT. 21 

minds have been led by them to a gross 
materialism ? It is not on one subject of 
inquiry, but in all, that we come speedily to 
questions which cannot be answered. The 
result therefore is, that we should never be 
jealous of research, but always jealous of 
presumption, — that on all subjects Reason 
should be warned to keep within the limit 
of her powers, but from none should Reason 
be warned away. Men who denounce any 
particular field of thought are always to 
be suspected. The presumption is, that 
valuable things which these men do not like 
are to be found there. There are many 
forms of Priestcraft. The same arts, and the 
same delusions, have been practised in many 
causes. Sometimes, though perhaps not so 



22 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

often as is popularly supposed, men have been 
warned off particular branches of physical in- 
quiry, in the supposed interests of Religion. 
But constantly and habitually, men are now 
warned from many branches of inquiry, both 
physical and psychological, in the interests — 
real enough — of the Positive Philosophy ! 
" Whatever," says Mr. Lewes, "is inaccessible 
to reason, should be strictly interdicted to 
research." Here we have the true ring of 
the old sacerdotal interdicts. Who is to 
define beforehand what is, and what is not, 
"inaccessible to reason?" Are we to take 
such a definition on trust from the priests of 
this new philosophy? They tell us that all 
proofs of Mind in the order of the universe, 
all evidences of purpose, all conceptions of 



RESEARCH DEFENDED. 23 

plan or of design, in the history of Creation, 
are the mere product of special " infirmities " 
of the human intellect. In opposition to 
these attempts — come from what quarter they 
may — to limit arbitrarily the boundaries of 
knowledge, let us maintain the principle that 
we never can certainly know what is 
" inaccessible to reason" until the way of 
access has been tried. In the highest 
interests of truth, we must resist any and 
every interdict against research. The strong 
presumption is that every philosophy which 
assumes to issue such an interdict, must have 
reason to fear inquiry. 

On these principles it may be affirmed 
generally that all subjects are legitimate sub- 
jects of reasoning in proportion as they are 



24 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

accessible to research ; and that the degree 
in which any given subject is accessible to 
research cannot be known until research has 
been attempted. 

Within certain limits it is not open to dis- 
pute that the early condition of Mankind is 
accessible to research. Contemporary history 
reaches back a certain way. Existing monu- 
ments afford their evidence for a considerable 
distance farther. Tradition has its own pro- 
vince still more remote; and latterly Geology 
and Archaeology have met upon common 
ground — ground in which Man and the 
Mammoth have been found together. 

It has not, however, been sufficiently ob- 
served that the inquiry into the Primitive 
Condition of Mankind resolves itself into three 



THREE SUBJECTS OF INQUIRY. 25 

separate questions, — that is to say, three 
questions which, though connected with each 
other, can be, and indeed must be, separately- 
dealt with : — 

1st. The Origin of Man considered simply 
as a Species, — that is to say, the method of 
his creation or introduction into the world. 

2d. The Antiquity of Man, or the time in 
the geological history and preparation of the 
globe at which this creation or introduction 
took place. 

3d. His Mental, Moral, and Intellectual Con- 
dition when first created. 

No doubt the theory as to the Origin of 
Man at which Sir J. Lubbock glances when 
he speaks of the " first being worthy to be 
called a man" (which is obviously the theory 



26 PRIMEVAL MAN. 



that this first man was born from some pre- 
existing creature not worthy to be so called), 
is most naturally connected with the farther 
theory that his mental condition was one of 
"utter barbarism.'' But this is not at all a 
necessary consequence. The first man, how- 
ever created, may have had special knowledge 
conveyed to him as well as a special material 
organization. Special powers of acquiring 
knowledge he certainly must have had, since 
we know that these are inseparably connected 
with the organization which made him 
" worthy to be called a man." The two 
questions, therefore, of the Origin of Man, 
and of his Primitive Condition, are clearly 
separable. In like manner, as regards Anti- 
quity, the question of Time has no neces- 



MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 27 

sary connection either with his Origin or his 
Primitive Condition. 

There is another point connected with this 
division of the whole subject into three sepa- 
rate questions, which has not perhaps been 
sufficiently considered, and that is the different 
degrees of connection which these questions 
have respectively, with the Mosaic narrative. 
I have already said that the inquiry as con- 
ducted both by Archbishop Whately and Sir 
J. Lubbock is avowedly conducted on a purely 
scientific basis. It is in the same light that 
it will be considered here. But it may be 
useful to observe in passing, that in regard to 
some of these questions the Mosaic account of 
Creation (apart altogether from any suggestions 
which have been raised as to the allegorical 



28 PRIMEVAL MAN. 



elements it. may contain) leaves room, even 
according to its most literal interpretation, 
for a much wider latitude of speculation than 
seems to be generally supposed. As regards 
the Origin of Man, undoubtedly, the im- 
pression conveyed is that the Creation of 
Man was a special act — which indeed, what- 
ever may have been its method, it must in a 
sense have been ; but, as regards the Primitive 
Condition of Mankind, it must be remembered 
that, according to the narrative in Genesis, 
there never was any generation of men which 
lived and walked in the primal light. It was 
the first man who fell. The second man was 
a murderer. The causes, therefore, of degra- 
dation are represented as having begun, so 
far as the race is concerned, at once ; and it 



DEFINITION OF TERMS NEEDED. 29 

is a special peculiarity of the account that 
those causes are said to have gone on in an 
accelerating ratio until the Flood. Even after 
that event there was no immunity from the ope- 
ration of the same causes, and existing races, 
therefore, may have passed through stages of 
any degree of barbarism since the days of 
Adam without involving any necessary incon- 
sistency whatever with the Mosaic account. 

It is farther to be observed that writers 
on the Primitive Condition of Man are 
generally guilty of the oversight of forget- 
ting to define the sense in which they use 
the words " civilized " and " uncivilized.'' This 
is a strange oversight on the part of such a 
logician as Dr. Whately. Sir J. Lubbock 
naturally enough feels himself relieved from an 



30 PRIMEVAL MAN. 



inconvenient obligation. But implicitly, if not 
explicitly, the Savage-theory and the reasoning 
in support of it assume that civilization con- 
sists mainly if not exclusively in a knowledge 
of the arts. Knowledge, for example, or igno- 
rance, of the use of metals, are, as we shall 
see, characteristics on which great stress is 
laid. Now, as regards this point, as Whately 
truly says, the narrative of Genesis distinctly 
states that this kind of knowledge did not 
belong to Mankind at first, but was the fruit 
of subsequent discovery, through the ordinary 
agency of those mental gifts with which Man 
at his creation was endowed. It is assumed 
in the Savage-theory that the presence or 
absence of this knowledge stands in close 
and natural connection with the presence or 



MAN DIVINELY TAUGHT. 3I 

absence of other and higher kinds of know- 
ledge, of which an acquaintance with the 
metals is but a symbol and a type. Within 
certain limits this is true, and we may 
assume, therefore, that in Genesis also, the 
intimation given on this subject implies that 
so far as civilization means a command over 
the powers of nature, Man was left to make 
his own way, through his powers of reason, 
and through his instincts of research. 
Whately has indeed inferred, from the de- 
scription given of Cain as a tiller of the 
ground, and of Abel as a keeper of flocks, 
that the great economic principle of the 
division of labour was at the first divinely 
taught to Man. But, if we are to understand 
this literally, not of tribes tracing their descent 



PRIMEVAL MAN. 



from Cain and Abel, but of the individual men 
who were the third and fourth human beings 
upon earth, then we must suppose that the pos- 
session of domestic animals and acquaintance 
with artificial cultivation were either divinely- 
communicated to Man, or instinctively dis- 
covered by him, at once. It may have been so, 
and it may be the intention of the narrative 
to assert it ; but, at all events, it is perfectly 
conceivable, that beyond a knowledge of the 
simplest arts which -were necessary for the 
sustenance of life, Man's primitive condition 
may have been a condition of mere childhood. 
As regards the third element in the whole 
question — the element of Time — it is well 
known that all calculations in regard to it 
rest upon data respecting which there has 



THE QUESTION OF TIME. 33 

always been much doubt and difficulty, and 
that similar data 'taken from the three 
existing versions of the Old Testament, — 
the Hebrew, the Samaritan, and the Septua- 
gint, — give results which vary from each 
other, not by years, or even by tens . of 
years, but by many centuries. Where differ- 
ences exist of such magnitude, no confidence 
can be felt in any of the results. It seems 
more than questionable how far the history 
of Man given in the Old Testament either is, 
or was intended to be, a complete history, or 
more than the history of typical men and of 
typical generations. At all events, it would 
be worse than idle to deny that this ques- 
tion of Time comes naturally and necessarily 
within the field of scientific investigation,^ in 

D 



34 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

so far as science can find a firm foundation 
for any conclusions in regard to it. 

Having already quoted St. Augustine upon 

the general subject of the desire of knowledge,. 

I cannot close even this cursory reference to 

the relation in which the Mosaic narrative 

stands to scientific research, without dwelling; 

for a moment on the very striking passage in 

which that great man deals with the only 

account which the world possesses of the 

history of Creation. St. Augustine was not 

the man to be dead to all those curious 

speculations and inquiries which that account 

excites, and which it does not profess to 

satisfy. His Confessions, he says, would not 

be the humble confessions he desires them to 

be, were he not to confess that as regards 



AUGUSTINE S DECLARATION. 35 

many of those questions, he does not under- 
stand the sense in which Moses wrote. All 
the more does he admire his words, "so 
sublime in their humility, so rich in their 
reserve " (alta hitmiliter, pauca copiose) ; then 
follows (lib. xii. c. 31) a passage which, — 
considering the age in which it was written, 
considering also the vague notions entertained 
by St. Augustine himself, and by all the 
world in his time, on the rank and import- 
ance of the natural sciences, — is surely one of 
the most remarkable passages ever written by 
Theologian or Philosopher. "For myself/' he 
says, "I declare boldly, and from the bottom 
of my heart, that if I were called to write 
something which was to be invested with 
supreme authority, I should desire most so to 
D 2 



36 .■ PRIMEVAL MAN. 

write that my words should include the widest 
range of meaning, and should not be confined 
to one sense alone, exclusive of all others, even 
of some which should be inconsistent with my 
own. Far from me, O God, be the temerity 
to suppose that so great a Prophet did not 
receive from Thy Grace even such a favour ! 
Yes ; he had in view and in his spirit, when 
he traced these words, all that we can ever 
discover of the truth — even every truth which 
has escaped us hitherto, or which escapes us 
still, but which nevertheless may yet be dis- 
covered in them. ,, Certain it is, that whatever 
new views may now be taken of the origin and 
authorship of the first chapter of Genesis,' it 
stands alone among the traditions of mankind 
in the wonderful simplicity and grandeur of 



THE GROUND CLEARED. 37 

its words. Specially remarkable — miraculous 
it really seems to be — is that character of 
reserve which leaves open to reason all that 
reason may be able to attain. The meaning 
of those words seems always to be a meaning 
a-head of science — not because it anticipates 
the results of science, but because it is inde- 
pendent of them, and runs, "as it were, round" 
the outer margin of all possible discovery. 

Having now cleared the ground of some 
preliminary difficulties which might otherwise 
have impeded us in a proper access to the 
subject, I shall proceed in the next Part to 
deal with the first of the three questions into' 
which that subject is divided — viz. the Origin of 
Man considered as a Species, in so far as this 
question appears to be accessible to reason. 



PART II. 

THE ORIGIN OF MAN. 

HTHE Human Race has no more know- 
ledge or recollection of its own origin 
than a child has of its own birth. But , a 
child drinks in with its mother's milk some 
knowledge of the relation in which it stands 
to its own parents, and as it grows up it 
knows of other children being born around it. 
It sees one generation going and another 
generation coming, so that long before the 
years of childhood close the 'ideas of birth 



IDEAS OF BIRTH AND DEATH. 39 

and death are alike familiar. Whatever sense 
of mystery may, in the first dawnings of 
reflection, have attached to either of these 
ideas, is soon lost in the familiar experience 
of the world. The same experience extends 
to the lower animals — they, too, are born and 
die. But no such experience ever comes to 
us casting any light on the Origin of our 
own Race, or of any other. Some varieties of 
form are effected in the case of a few animals, 
by domestication, and by constant care in the 
selection of peculiarities transmissible to the 
young. But these variations are all within 
certain limits ; and wherever human care re- 
laxes or is abandoned, the old forms return, 
and the selected characters disappear. The 
founding of new forms by the union of 



40 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

different species, even when standing in close 
natural relation to each other, is absolutely- 
forbidden by the sentence of sterility which 
Nature pronounces and enforces upon all 
hybrid offspring. And so it results that Man 
has never seen the origin of any species. 
Creation by birth is the only kind of creation 
he has ever seen ; and from this kind of 
creation he has never seen a new species 
come. And yet he does know (for this the 
science of Palaeontology has most certainly 
revealed), that the introduction of new species 
has been a work carried on constantly and 
continuously during vast but unknown periods 
of time. The whole face of animated nature 
has been changed, not once, but frequently ; 
not suddenly for the most part, perhaps not 



METHOD OF CREATION. 41 

suddenly in any case, but slowly and gradually, 
and yet completely. When once this fact is 
clearly apprehended — whenever we become 
familiar with the idea that Creation has had 
a History, we are inevitably led to the con- 
clusion that Creation has also had a Method. 
And then the further question arises, — What 
has this method been ? It is perfectly natural 
that men who have any hopes of solving this 
question should take that supposition which 
seems the readiest ; and the readiest sup- 
position is, that the agency by which new 
species are created is the same agency by 
which new individuals are born. The difficulty 
of conceiving any other compels men, if they 
are to guess at all, to guess upon this founda- 
tion. Such is the origin and genesis of all 



42 PRIMEVAL MAN. 



the theories of Development, of which Mr. 
Darwin's hypothesis is only the latest form. 
It is not in itself inconsistent with the Theistic 
argument, or with belief in the ultimate 
agency and directing power of a Creative 
Mind. This is clear, since we never think of 
any difficulty in reconciling that belief with 
our knowledge of the ordinary laws of animal 
and vegetable reproduction. Those laws may 
be correctly, and can only be adequately, 
described in the language of religion and 
theology. "He who is the alone Author and 
Creator of all things, ,, says the present Bishop 
of Salisbury, "does not by separate acts of 
creation give being and life to those creatures 
which are to be brought forth, but employs 
His living creatures thus to give effect to His 



ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 43 

will and pleasure, and as His agents to be the 
means of communicating life."* The same 
language might be applied, without the altera- 
tion of a word, to the origin of species, if it 
were indeed true that new kinds as well as 
new individuals were created by being born. 
The truth is, that the argument which has so 
often been employed to elevate our conception 
of the wisdom hid in secondary causes, is an 
argument which only gains increasing strength 
and force in proportion to the number and 
involution of those causes, and to the extent 
and scope of their effects. If it does not 
diminish, but only augments the wonder of 
Organic Life, that it has been so contrived 
as to be capable of propagating itself, neither 

* Charge, 1867. 



44 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

would it diminish that wonder, but rather 
enhance it to an infinite degree, that Organ- 
isms should be gifted with the still more 
wonderful power of developing Forms of Life 
other and higher than their own. So far, 
therefore, as belief in a Personal Creator is 
concerned, the difficulties in the way of 
accepting this hypothesis are not theological 
The difficulties are scientific. The first funda- 
mental difficulty is simply this, — that all the 
theories of Development ascribe to known 
causes unknown effects — unknown as regards 
the times in which we now live, and unknown 
so far as has hitherto been ascertained 
in all the past times of which there is any 
record. It is true that this record — the geo- 
logical record — is imperfect. But, as Sir 



THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD. 45 

Roderick Murchison has long ago proved, 
there are parts of , that record which are 
singularly complete, and in those parts we 
have the proofs of Creation without any 
indication of Development, The Silurfeh 
rocks, as regards Oceanic Life, are perfect 
and abundant in the forms they have pre- 
served, yet there are no Fish. The Devonian 
Age followed, tranquilly, and without a break ; 
and in the Devonian Sea, suddenly, Fish 
appear — appear in shoals, and in forms of the 
highest and most perfect type. There is no 
trace of links or transitional forms between 
the great class of Mollusca and the great 
class of Fishes. There is no reason whatever 
to suppose that such forms, if they had 
existed, can have been destroyed in deposits 



46 PRIMEVAL MAN. 



which have preserved in wonderful perfection 
the minutest organisms. So much for the 
Past. 

As regards the Present, Organisms are 
known to reproduce life, but always life which 
is like their own. And if this likeness admits 
of degrees of difference, the margin of variety- 
is not known to be ever broad enough for 
the foundation of a new species. This, too, 
is remarkable, — that such margin of variety 
as does ever exist among the offspring of the 
same parents becomes smaller and smaller in 
proportion as we rise in the scale of Organic 
Life. That any organism, therefore, can ever 
produce another which varies from itself in 
any truly specific character, is an assumption 
not justified by any known fact No organism 



THE THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT. 47 

is ever seen to exert such a power now. 
There are many indications which tend to 
show that all organisms have been equally 
incapable of modification since the earliest 
monuments of Man. There is no proof that 
any organism ever did fulfil such functions at 
any time. The hypothesis is resorted to 
because of the difficulty of conceiving any 
method of creation except creation by birth. 
But this is no adequate standing-ground for a 
scientific theory. It would be well for those 
who speculate upon this subject to remember, 
that whenever a new species or a new class 
of animal has begun to be, something must 
have happened which is not in the " ordinary 
course of nature," as known to us. Some- 
thing, therefore, must have happened which 



48 PRIMEVAL MAN. 



we have a difficulty, probably an insuperable 
difficulty, in conceiving. If, therefore, the 
theory of Development can be shown to 
involve difficulties of conception which are 
quite as great as those which it professes to 
remove, then it ceases to have any standing- 
ground at all. An hypothesis which escapes 
from particular difficulties by encountering 
others which are smaller, may be tolerated at 
least provisionally. But an hypothesis which, 
to avoid an alternative supposed to be incon- 
ceivable, adopts another alternative encom- 
passed by many difficulties quite as great, 
is not entitled even to provisional acceptance. 
Now, the difficulties attending the theory of 
Development, or of creation by birth, attain 
their maximum in the case of Man. Some 



DIFFICULTIES ATTENDING IT. 49 

of them are referred to in a cursory manner 
by Dr. Whately. Let us examine them a 
little nearer. 

"Man's place in nature" has long been, and 
still is, the grand battle-ground of anatomists 
and physiologists ; but the points on which 
they are disagreed among themselves have 
not really any importance corresponding to 
the vehemence with which they have been 
disputed. The great French anatomist, Cuvier, 
was of opinion that the distinctions between 
Man's organism and the organism of the 
highest among the beasts are of such magni- 
tude and importance, that the human race 
cannot be classified as belonging to the same 
" Order " with any other creature, but must be 
held to constitute an "Order" by itself. In 

E 



50 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

our own time Professor Owen holds the same 
opinion. Professor Huxley, on the other 
hand, has undertaken to prove that the 
anatomical differences between the human 
frame and the frame of the Gorilla, or Chim- 
panzee, are not such, either in kind or in 
degree, as to justify this wide distinction. 
But he specially limits this conclusion to the 
differences of physiology, and confesses that, if 
in defining Man we are to take into account 
the phenomena of Mind, there is between 
Man and those beasts which stand nearest to 
him in anatomy, a difference so wide that it 
cannot be measured — an " enormous gulf" — 
"a divergence immeasurable" and " practically 
infinite." But this last conclusion is really 
incompatible with the first. There is an 



MIND CORRELATED WITH ORGANIZATION. 51 

inseparable connection between the phenomena 
of Mind and the phenomena of Organization. 
They must be taken together, and be inter- 
preted together. The structure of every 
creature is correlated with the functions which 
its several parts aj*e fitted to discharge; and 
the mental character, dispositions, and instincts 
of the creature are again strictly correlated 
with these functions. We must accept from 
anatomists all the facts which anatomy can 
teach ; but the value to be placed on these 
facts is a very different question. All 
classification is ideal, and depends on the 
relative value to be placed on facts which are 
in themselves indisputable. On this question 
of the comparative value of anatomical facts 
we have other facts to go by which do not 



52 PRIMEVAL MAN. 



belong to the science of Physiology. Nature 
Is her own interpreter, and her evidence is 
clear. Whatever may be the anatomical 
difference between Man and the Gorilla, that 
difference is the equivalent, in physical orga- 
nization, of the whole mental difference between 
a Gorilla and a Man. This is the measure 
of value which Nature has set upon the kind 
and degree of divergence which separates these 
two Material Forms. Any other measure of 
value which may be set on that divergence 
must be founded on an arbitrary and partial 
selection among the facts of which all sound 
classification must take account. Imperfect 
as all existing systems of classification are, 
they are not so bad in the case of any group 
of the lower animals as to separate organs 



cuvier's classification. 53 

from the functions they discharge, and from 
the mental habits which peculiarities of struc- 
ture merely represent, embody, and subserve. 
Although the resemblances which have been 
seized upon for the purpose of grouping 
together a certain' number of animals into 
Classes, or Families, or Orders, have been 
for the most part resemblances arbitrarily 
selected, and have borne no consistent refer- 
ence to any one standard of comparison 
throughout the creatures to be arranged, 
yet those resemblances have not been so 
arbitrary nor so fallacious as to join 
together in one common "Order" animals 
separated from each other in powers and 
habits by an impassable gulf. Of the eight 
"Orders" (exclusive of Man) into which Cuvier 



54 PRIMEVAL MAN. 



divided all the animals whose young are 
suckled (Mammalia), one is distinguished from 
the others by the prehensile character of 
both feet and hands {Quadrumand)\ another 
Order is distinguished by the nature of its, 
food {Carnivora)\ the third is distinguished 
by peculiarities in the production of the young 
(Marsnpialia)\ the fourth and fifth are distin- 
guished by the nature of their teeth (Rodentia 
and Edentata)) the sixth are distinguished by 
the texture of their skin (Pachydermatci)\ 
the seventh by peculiarities of the digestive 
system (Raminantid)\ and the last by the 
fish-like form and fish-like habitat of the 
Whales and Dugongs (Cetacea). Now, although 
it is obvious that no one principle of classifi- 
cation is consistently adhered to in this system,. 



MAN AND THE CHIMPANZEE. 55 

— although there is no common standard 
to which they are all referred, — yet, as a 
matter of fact, the peculiarities chosen are not 
only the most salient and the most character-* 
istic peculiarities of the animals as a whole, 
but they are connected with others which run 
through the whole organism, and with some 
corresponding similarities of instinct and dis- 
position. But no such defence can be offered 
for the system which groups Man in the same 
Order with the Chimpanzee or the Ourang- 
outang, upon the ground merely that the 
limbs of those animals are terminated by 
organs which are anatomically "true feet and 
true hands ; " or because they have the same 
number of teeth ; or because the same primary 
divisions exist in the structure of the brain. 



56 PRIMEVAL MAN, 



The difference between the hand of a monkey 
and the hand of a man may seem small when 
they are both placed on the dissecting table ; 
but in that difference, whatever it may be, lies 
the whole difference between an organ limited 
to the climbing of trees or the plucking of 
fruit, and an organ which is so correlated with 
man's inventive genius that by its aid the Earth 
is weighed, and the distance of the Sun is 
measured. In like manner let us assume it 
to be true that the difference between the 
brain of Man and the brain of the Gorilla 
may be reduced to a difference of volume, 
to that visible difference alone, and even as 
regards volume to a difference in quantity 
comparatively small. " Cranial capacity " is 
measured by the cubic inches of space which 



CRANIAL CAPACITY. 57 

a skull contains. Professor Huxley tells us,* 
on the authority of Professor Schaafhausen, 
that some Hindu skulls have as small a 
capacity as 46 cubic inches, whilst the largest 
Gorilla yet measured contained upwards of 35 
cubic inches. This represents a difference of 
volume of less than 11 cubic inches. But 
the difference between this Hindu skull and 
the largest European skull (114 cubic inches) 
amounts, according to the same authority, to 
no less than 68 cubic inches. Nevertheless 
the significance set by the facts of nature 
upon that difference of 11 cubic inches 
between the Gorilla and the Man, is the 
difference between an irrational brute confined 
to some one climate and to some limited area 

* Lyell's "Antiquity of Man/' p. 84. 



58 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

of the globe, — which no outward conditions can 
modify or improve, — and a Being equally 
adapted to the whole habitable world, with 
powers, however undeveloped, of comparison, 
of reflection, of judgment, of reason, with a 
sense of right and wrong, — and with all these 
capable of accumulated acquisition, and there- 
fore of indefinite advance. It is not true to 
affirm that these characteristics stand wholly 
apart — separated by an "enormous gulf" — 
from his physical organization. There is an 
adjustment between these peculiarities of Mind 
and the special peculiarities of his Frame as 
nice, and as obvious to sense and reason, as 
there is between the ferocious disposition of a 
Tiger and his powerful claws, or between the 
retractile character of these and his soft and 



INCONSISTENCY OF ANATOMISTS. 59 

stealthy tread. When anatomists object to 
erect a separate " Order " for Man on the 
plea that it is an attempt to reconcile two 
different orders of ideas, — namely, ideas of ana- 
tomical structure, and ideas of mental power, — 
they are simply refusing to place that value 
on anatomical differences which nature puts 
on them. They find no similar difficulty as 
regards other animals in co-ordinating ana- 
tomical structure with mental powers and 
instincts. The canine teeth of the Carnivora 
stand in close and consistent relation with 
their dispositions. The prehensile character 
of the feet or tail in monkeys is a true and 
adequate expression of their arboreal habits ; 
and the small and simple brains of the 
Marsupials (Kangaroos, &c.) are strictly cor- 



6o PRIMEVAL MAN. 



related with their low intelligence. We may 
not — and we do not — understand how these 
phenomena of Matter and of Mind are thus 
dependent on each other; but as a fact we 
see that this dependence is universal, and the 
distinctions which we found on anatomical 
structure have their value corroborated and 
confirmed by close and inseparable corre- 
spondences of instinct and intelligence. Man 
is no exception whatever to this universal 
law; and any system of classification which 
places a value on his anatomical peculiarities, 
separating by an impassable gulf between his 
Body and his Mind, is a system altogether 
inconsistent with philosophy. The value set 
upon any given anatomical peculiarity, or 
group of peculiarities, in a sound system of 



SOUNDNESS OF OWEN'S ARGUMENT. 6l 

classification, ought evidently to correspond as 
nearly as possible with the value assigned to 
those peculiarities in the system of nature. 
The significance of any anatomical feature 
hinges on the number and variety of other 
peculiarities to which it stands related. Pro- 
fessor Owen's argument is therefore clearly 
sound in principle,— that the "consequences" 
of any such peculiarity must be considered in 
estimating its systematic value. Take the 
case of the differences, anatomically small, 
which distinguish the arms of Man from the 
arms of a monkey. " The consequences," 
says Professor Owen, "of the liberation of one 
pair of limbs from all service in station and 
progression, due to the extreme modification 
of the other pair for the exclusive discharge 



62 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

of those functions, are greater, and involve a 
superior number and quality of powers than 
those resulting from the change of an 'ungu- 
late' (hoofed, one of Cuvier's sub-class divisions) 
into an l unguiculate/ or claw-bearing, condi- 
tion of limb, and they demand therefore an 
equivalent value in a zoological system." 

Accordingly, Professor Owen has attempted 
to found a system of classification on the 
degrees of cerebral development, as being the 
anatomical feature which on the whole stands 
in the most governing relation to other 
peculiarities of structure. This proposal has 
been vehemently contested ; but the contest 
seems to have turned on a point not really 
vital to the question.. Objectors do but aim 
at proving that all the leading divisions in the 



owen's classification. 6$ 

brain of Man exist also in the brain of 
monkeys ; and thus, that the difference is 
reduced to one of volume or quantity alone. 
But this difference of quantity, relative to the 
size of the organism, even if no other can 
be detected by the knife, is correlated with 
a whole host of other anatomical peculiarities 
which span the whole breadth of the chasm 
that yawns between the brutes and Man. 
These peculiarities must be taken as a whole, 
in their assemblage, and in their actual 
connection. The size of Brain is but the 
index of many other differences, all closely 
related to one Purpose, and contributing to 
one result. It is no answer to this argument 
to say that an equal amount, or even a 
greater amount, of difference in mere bulk is 



64 PRIMEVAL MAX. 



found to exist between the lowest and the 
highest human brain, because the fact with 
which we have to deal is this, that a certain 
minimum quantity of that mysterious sub- 
stance is constantly and uniformly associated 
with all the other anatomical peculiarities 
of Man. Below that minimum the whole 
accompanying structure undergoes far more 
than a corresponding change, — even the whole 
change between the lowest Savage and the 
highest Ape. Above that minimum, all 
subsequent variations in quantity are accom- 
panied by no changes whatever in physical 
structure. In placing, therefore, a high value 
— a value in classification of Order, or even 
of Class — upon the eleven cubic inches of 
brain-space which lie between the Hindu and 



CHASM BETWEEN MAN AND ANIMALS. 65 

the Gorilla, when we place no such value on 
the sixty-eight cubic inches which lie between 
the Hindu and Sir Isaac Newton, we are but 
accepting the evidence of Nature — following 
where she leads, and classifying according to 
her award. 

The bearing of this conclusion on the 
Origin of Man is simply this, that in 
proportion as the difference between Man 
and the lower animals is properly appreciated 
in the light of nature, in the same proportion 
will the difficulty increase of conceiving how 
the chasm could be passed by any process 
of Transmutation or Development. 

This difficulty is still further increased if 
we advert for a moment to the direction in 
which the human frame diverges from the 



66 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

structure of the brutes. It diverges in the 
direction of greater physical helplessness and 
weakness. That is to say, it is a divergence 
which of all others it is most impossible to 
ascribe to mere "Natural Selection." The 
unclothed and unprotected condition of the 
human body, its comparative slowness of foot, 
the absence of teeth adapted for prehension or 
for defence, the same want of power for similar 
purposes in the hands and fingers, the blunt- 
ness of the sense of smell, such as to render 
it useless for the detection of prey which is 
concealed, — all these are features which stand 
in strict and harmonious relation to the mental 
powers of Man. But, apart from these, they 
would place him at an immense disadvantage 
in the struggle for existence. This, therefore,. 



lubbock's progenitor of man. 67 

is not the direction in which the blind forces 
of Natural Selection could ever work. The 
creature u not worthy to be called a man/' to 
whom Sir J. Lubbock has referred as the pro- 
genitor of Man, was, ex hypothesis deficient in 
those mental capacities which now distinguish 
the lowest of the human race. To exist at 
all, this creature must have been more animal 
in its structure ; it must have had bodily 
powers and organs more like those of the 
beasts. The continual improvement and per- 
fection of these would be the direction of 
variation most favourable to the continuance 
of the species. These could not be modified 
in the direction of greater weakness without 
inevitable destruction, until first by the gift 
of reason and of mental capacities of con- 

F 2 



68 PRIMEVAL MAN. 



trivance, there had been established an 
adequate preparation for the change. The 
loss of speed or of climbing power which is 
involved in the fore-arms becoming useless for 
locomotion, could not t>e incurred with safety 
until the brain was ready to direct a hand. 
The foot could not be allowed to part with 
its prone or prehensile character until the 
powers of reason and reflection had been pro- 
vided to justify, as it now explains, the erect 
position and the upward gaze. And so through 
all the innumerable modifications of form 
which are the peculiarities of Man, and which 
stand in indissoluble union with his capacities 
of thought. The lowest degree of intelligence 
which is now possessed by the lowest Savage, 
is not more than enough to compensate him 



AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES. 69 

for the weakness of his frame, or to enable 
him to maintain successfully the struggle for 
existence. With many Savages it is a hard 
struggle, despite senses of 'sight and hearing 
trained by necessity so as almost^ to approach 
the instincts of the lower animals ; despite 
also all those powers of reasoning which, 
however low, are yet peculiar to himself, and 
separate him, as is confessed, by an impassable 
gulf from the highest of the beasts. Many 
of the Aborigines of Australia could do no 
more at times than support a precarious 
existence by scraping up roots, and eating 
snakes and other reptiles. The rotten blubber 
of a dead whale cast upon the beach was, 
and is often, not only a luxury and a feast, 
but deliverance from actual starvation. Sir 



70 PRIMEVAL MAN. 



J. Lubbock's theory is, that in these Savages 
we see something rather above than under 
the primitive condition of Mankind. But it 
may be safely said that a very small 
diminution of mental capacity below that of 
an Australian Savage, would render Man's 
characteristic structure incompatible with the 
maintenance of his existence in most, if not 
in all, of the countries where he is actually 
found. If that frame was once more bestial, 
it may have been better adapted for a bestial 
existence. But it is impossible to conceive 
how it could ever have emerged from that 
existence by virtue of Natural Selection. Man 
must have had human proportions of mind 
before he could afford to lose bestial pro- 
portions of body. If the change in mental 



THE THEORY OF TRANSMUTATION. 71 

power came simultaneously with the change 
in physical organization, then it was all that 
we can ever know or understand of a new 
creation. There is no ground whatever for 
supposing that ordinary generation has been 
the agency employed, seeing that no effects 
similar in kind are ever produced by that 
agency, so far as is known to us. The theory 
of Transmutation in all its forms, even as 
applied to the lower animals, is exposed to 
many difficulties greater than those which it 
professes to remove. But as applied to Man, 
those difficulties are accumulated to an in- 
calculable degree. Most of them, too, are 
altogether of a special kind, because the 
divergence which ordinary generation is sup- 
posed to have produced in the case of Man is 



72 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

a divergence, to use Professor Huxley's words, 
" immeasurable — practically infinite." 

It needs only to be added to this sketch, 
that such as Man now is, Man, so far as we 
yet know, has always been. Two skeletons 
at least have been found respecting which 
there is strong ground for believing that they 
belong to the very earliest human race which 
lived in Northern Europe. I defer any refer- 
ence to the probable epoch of time when 
those skeletons were clothed with flesh and 
blood. This belongs to the next division of 
our subject, which is the Antiquity as 
distinguished from the Origin of Man. 
Suffice it here to say that although one of 
those skeletons indicates a coarse, perhaps 
even what we should call — as we might fairly 



ANCIENT SKELETONS. 73 

call some living specimens of our race — a 
brutal man, yet even this skeleton is in all 
its proportions strictly human. Its cranial 
capacity indicates a volume of brain, and 
some peculiarities of shape not materially 
different from many skulls of Savage races 
now living. The other skeleton, respecting 
which the evidence of extreme antiquity is 
the strongest, is not only perfectly human 
in all its proportions, but its skull has a 
cranial capacity not inferior to that of many 
modern Europeans. This most ancient of all 
known human skulls is so ample in its 
dimensions that it might have contained the 
brains of a philosopher. So conclusive is 
this evidence against any change whatever in 
the specific characters of Man since the oldest 



74 PRIMEVAL MAX. 

Human Being yet known was born, that 
Professor Huxley pronounces it to be clearly 
indicated "that the first traces of the 
primordial stock whence Man has proceeded 
need no longer be sought, by those who 
entertain any form of the doctrine of 
progressive development, in the newest ter- 
tiaries," — (that is, in the oldest deposit yet 
known to contain human remains at all) 
" But," he adds, " they may be looked for in 
an epoch more distant from the age of those 
tertiaries than that is from us."* So far, 
therefore, the evidence is on the side of the 
originality of Man as a species, nay, even 
as a Class by himself, separated by a gulf 
practically immeasurable from all the crea- 

* Lyell, " Antiquity of Man," p. 89. 



MAN AN ORIGINAL SPECIES. 75 

tures that are, or that are known ever to 
have been, his contemporaries in the world. 
In possession of this ground, we can wait « 
for such further evidence in favour of Trans- 
mutation as may be brought to light. 
Meanwhile at least we are entitled to remain 
incredulous, remembering, as Professor Phillips 
has said, that " everywhere we are required 
by the hypothesis to look somewhere else ; 
which may fairly be interpreted to signify 
that the hypothesis everywhere fails in the 
first and most important step. How is it 
conceivable that the second stage should be 
everywhere preserved, but the first nowhere?"* 

"Life — the Origin and Succession," by Professor John 
Phillips. 



PART III. 

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 

T N passing from the subject of Man's Origin 
to the subject of his Antiquity, we pass 
from almost total darkness to a question 
which is comparatively accessible to reason 
and open to research. Evidence bearing upon 
this question may be gathered along several 
different walks of science, and these are all 
found tending in one direction, and pointing to 
one general result. First comes the evidence 
of History, embracing under that name all 



VARIETY OF THE EVIDENCE. 77 

literature, whether it professes to record events, 
or does no more than allude to them in 
poetry and song. Then comes Archaeology, 
the evidence of Human Monuments, belonging 
to times or races whose voice, though not 
silenced, has become inarticulate to us. 
Piecing on to this evidence, comes that 
which Geology has recently afforded from 
human remains associated with the latest 
physical changes on the surface and in the 
climates of the globe. Then comes the evi- 
dence of Language, founded on the facts of 
Human Speech, and the laws which regulate 
its development and growth. And lastly, 
there is the evidence afforded by the existing 
physical structure, and the existing geogra- 
phical distribution of the various Races of 



jS PRIMEVAL MAN. 

Mankind. According as we may have made 
one or other of these great branches of inquiry 
our favourite pursuit, we may be disposed 
to place a different estimate on their com- 
parative value. But perhaps we shall not go 
far wrong if we arrange them in the order 
here given, as the order in which they stand 
relatively to the directness and certainty of 
the testimony they afford. 

One distinction, however, it is important 
to bear in mind. Chronology is of two kinds, 
— first, Time measurable by years, — and 
secondly, Time measurable only by an 
ascertained order or succession of events. 
The one may be called Time-absolute, the 
other Time-relative. Now, among all the 
sciences which afford us evidence on the 



TWO KINDS OF CHRONOLOGY. 79 

Antiquity of Man, one, and one only, gives 
us any knowledge of Time-absolute ; and 
that is History. From all the others we can 
gather only the less definite information of 
Time-relative. They can tell us of nothing 
more than of the order in which certain events 
took place. But of the length of interval 
between those events, neither Archaeology, nor 
Geology, nor Ethnology can tell us anything. 
Even History, that is, the records of Written 
Documents, carries us back to times of which 
no contemporary account remains, and the 
distance of which in years from any known 
epoch is, and must be, a matter of con- 
jecture. No other history than the Hebrew 
History even professes to go back to the 
Creation of Man, or to give any account of 



So PRIMEVAL MAN. 



the events which connect existing generations 
with the first Progenitor of their Race. And 
of that History, the sole object appears to be, 
to give in outline the order of such transac- 
tions as had a special bearing on Religious 
Truth, and on the course of Spiritual Belief. 
The intimations given in the earlier chapters 
of the Book of Genesis on all matters of 
purely secular interest, are incidental only, 
and exceedingly obscure. And yet it is not 
a total silence. Enough is said to indicate 
how much there lay beyond and outside of the 
narrative which is given. The dividing of the 
Tribes of the Gentiles among the descendants 
of Japheth,* conveys the idea of movements 
and operations which probably occupied long 
* Gen. x. 2, 5. 



GENEALOGY OF SHEM. 8l 

intervals of time, and many generations of 
men. The same impression must arise from 
the condensed abstract given of the origin 
and growth of communities capable of 
building such cities as Resen and Calah 
and Nineveh are described to be.* In the 
genealogy of the family of Shem, we have 
a list of names, which are names and nothing 
more to us. It is genealogy which neither 
does, nor professes to do, more than to trace 
the order of succession among a few families 
only out of the millions then already existing 
in the world. Nothing but this order of 
succession is given, nor is it at all certain 
that this order is consecutive or complete. 
Nothing is told us of all that lay behind 

* Gen. x. ii, 12. 
G 



82 PRIMEVAL MAN. 



that curtain of thick darkness, in front of 
which these names are made to pass. And 
yet there are, as it were, momentary liftings, 
through which we have glimpses of great 
movements which were going on, and had 
long been going on, beyond. No shapes are 
distinctly seen. Even the direction of those 
movements can be only guessed. But voices 
are heard which are as the voices of many 
nations. The very first among the descen- 
dants of Noah whose individuality and 
personality is clear to us, — the very first 
whose doings can be brought into relation 
with events otherwise known or recognizable 
in the History of Man, — is introduced in a 
manner which reveals the fact that different 
races of the human family had then already 



ABRAHAM. 83 



been long established and widely spread. 
The memorable and mysterious journey 
which brought Terah into Haran on his 
way to Canaan,* was a journey beginning 
in that ancient home, Ur, already known as 
"of the Chaldees.' , And when the great 
figure of his son Abraham appears upon 
the scene, we find ourselves already in the 
presence of the Monarchy of Egypt, and 
of the advanced civilization of the Pharaohs. 
In the same narrative, on another side, 
we come into the presence of one of 
those great military Kingdoms of the East 
which in succession occupy so large a space 
in the history of the ancient world. Chedor- 
laomer, with his tributary Princes, was then 



G 2 



84 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

the ruler of nations capable of waging wars 
of conquest at great distances from the seat 
of their government, and the centre of their 
power. We see in him therefore the Sovereign 
of a long-established and powerful race. And 
yet these migrations and wars of Abraham 
stand, if not at the very beginning of 
History, at least at the very beginning of 
Historical Chronology. They mark the very 
earliest date in the history of Man, on 
which, within moderate limits of discrepancy, 
all chronologists are agreed. That date may 
be fixed at 2,000 B.C. This is the boundary, 
in looking backwards, of Time-absolute. All 
beyond, is Time-relative. We have, indeed, 
other evidence of an historical character to 
show that the Monarchy of Egypt had been 



THE EGYPTIAN MONARCHY. 85 

founded long before the time of Abraham, i 
But how long, is a question on which there 
is the widest discrepancy of opinion. The 
most moderate computation, however, carries 
the foundation of that Monarchy as far back 
as 700 years before the visit of the Hebrew 
Patriarch. Some of the best German 
scholars hold that there is evidence of a 
much longer chronology. But seven centuries 
before Abraham is the estimate of Mr. R. 
Stuart Poole, of the British Museum, who is 
one of the very highest authorities, and 
certainly the most cautious, upon questions 
of Egyptian chronology. This places the 
beginning of the Pharaohs in the twenty- 
eighth century B.C. But according to Ussher's 
interpretation of the Hebrew Pentateuch, the 



86 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

twenty-eighth century B.C. would be some 
400 years before the Flood. On the other 
hand, a difference of 800 years is allowed 
by the chronology which is founded on the 
Septuagint Version of the Scriptures. But 
the fact of this difference tells in two ways. 
A margin of variation amounting to eight 
centuries between two versions of the same 
document, is a variation so enormous, that 
it seems to cast complete doubt on the 
whole system of interpretation on which such 
computations of time are based. And yet 
it is more than questionable whether it is 
possible to reconcile the known order of 
events with even this larger estimate of the 
number of years. It is true that, according 
to this larger estimate, the Flood would be 



CHEDORLAOMER. 87 

carried back about four and a half centuries / 
beyond the beginning of the Pharaohs. But 
is this enough ? The founding of a Monarchy 
is not the beginning of a race. The people 
amongst whom such Monarchies arose must 
have grown and gathered during many 
generations. Nor is it in regard to the 
peopling of Egypt alone that this difficulty 
meets us in the face. The existence in the 
days of Abraham of such an organized 
government as that of Chedorlaomer, shows 
that 2,000 years B.C. there flourished in Elam, 
beyond Mesopotamia, a nation which even 
now would be ranked among "the Great 
Powers." And if nations so great had thus 
arisen, altogether unnoticed in the Hebrew 
narrative — if we are left to gather as best 



PRIMEVAL MAN. 



we may from other sources, all our know- 
ledge of their origin and growth, how much 
more is this true of far distant lands over 
which the advancing tide of human population 
had rolled, or was then rolling its mysterious 
wave ? If the most ancient and the most 
sacred literature in the world tells us so 
little of the early history of the men who 
lived and flourished on the banks of the 
Euphrates, the Tigris, or the Nile, what 
information can we expect to find in it 
respecting those who were probably already 
settled on the Indus and the Ganges, or 
were spreading along the banks of the 
Brahmaputra and of the Yellow River ? 
What of those tribes who were following 
the Volga and the Oxus, or the Danube 



LONGER CHRONOLOGY NECESSARY. 89 

and the Rhine ? What of that vast Continent 
whose secrets are being revealed at last only 
in our own day — the Continent of Africa ? 
When and how did that Negro Race begin, 
which is both one of the most ancient and 
one of the most strongly marked among the 
Varieties of Man ? And what again can we 
learn from Genesis of the peopling of the New 
World ? When did Man first come upon the 
inland seas of America, and follow the great 
rivers which fall into the Gulf of Mexico ? 

It is not possible to suppose that some 
450 years before the foundation of the Egyp- 
tian Monarchy is a period long enough to 
account even for the few facts which are 
implied in the Mosaic narrative itself, respect- 
ing the dispersion and geographical distribution 



90 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

of Mankind. And to those facts must be 
added others resting on evidence which is still 
historical. There is another civilization which 
appears to have been almost as ancient as 
that of Egypt, and which has been far more 
enduring. The authentic records of the 
Chinese Empire are said to begin in the 
twenty- fourth century B.C. — that is, more 
than 300 years before the time of Abraham.* 
They begin, too, apparently with a Kingdom 
already established, with a capital city, and 
with a settled government.^ Yet this civili- 
zation first appears at the farthest extremity 

* "The Chinese;" G. T. T. Meadows, p. 34. 

+ Since this passage was published I have been favoured with 
an interesting letter from the Rev. James Legge, who has spent 
many years as a Missionary in China, and has published 
valuable editions of the Historical works of the Chinese. 



CHINESE HISTORY. f)I 

of Asia, separated by many ' thousands of 
miles, and by some of the most impassable 
regions of the world, from the cradle of the 
Human Race, and from the country where 
Noah and his family were saved. Such facts 
seem to point to one or other of two con- 
clusions — either that the Flood must have 
happened at a period in the history of Man 
vastly earlier than any that has been usually 
supposed, or else that the Flood destroyed 
only a small portion of the Human Family. 
That the Deluge affected only a small portion 

It is this gentleman's opinion that the Chinese Tribe was only 
beginning to grow into a kingdom about 2,000 B.C. and, 
that 1,200 years later, the kingdom did not extend nearly so 
far south as the Yang-tsze river. The general conclusion to 
which these dates point, is not, I think, materially affected 
by this somewhat shortened estimate of Chinese Historical 
Chronology. 



92 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

of the globe which is now habitable is almost 
certain. But this is quite a different thing 
from supposing that the Flood affected only 
a small portion of the world which was then 
inhabited. The wide, if not the universal 
prevalence among the heathen nations, of a 
tradition preserving the memory of some 
such great catastrophe, has always been con- 
sidered to indicate recollection carried by 
descent from the surviving few. And this 
tradition seems to be curiously strong and 
definite among tribes which are now separated 
by half the circumference of the globe 
from the region affected by the Flood. At 
all events this is clear, that the difficulty of 
reconciling the narrative of Genesis with an 
Indefinitely older date is a very small diffi- 



AREA OF THE FLOOD. 95 

culty indeed, as compared with the difficulty 
of reconciling it with a very limited destruc- 
tion of the Human Race. The evidence for 
a higher antiquity of Man is derived from 
countries in comparatively close proximity 
with those w T hich, under any possible supposi- 
tion as to the area of a Deluge, must have 
been then submerged. On the other hand, 
we have seen how utterly uncertain and 
how r enormously different are the chronologies 
which profess to be founded on the Penta- 
teuch. They all involve suppositions as to 
the principle of interpretation, and as to 
the import of words descriptive of descent, 
which arc in the highest degree doubtful, 
and which it is evident cannot be applied 
consistently throughout. Thus, when we 



94 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

read* of Canaan, the grandson of Noah, that 
he st begat Sidon, his firstborn, and Heth," we 
seem to have the names of individual men ; 
but, when it is immediately added that he 
also " begat the Jebusite, and the Amorite, 
and the Girgasite, and the Hivite, and the 
Arkite, and the Sinite," &c. &c, it is clear that 
we are dealing not with single generations, but 
w r ith a condensed abstract of the origin and 
growth of Tribes. No definite information 
is given in such abstracts as to the lapse of 
time. The chronology of changes not specially 
included in the narrative, can only be gathered 
from the general character of the events 
described. And that general character is such 
as fully to corroborate the evidence w r e have 
\Gen. x. 15—18. 



A TWILIGHT TIME. 95 

from other sources— that long before the Call 
of Abraham, that is to say, long before the 
twentieth century B.C., the Human Race had 
been increasing and multiplying on the earth 
from such ancient days that in many regions, 
far removed from the centre of their dis- 
persion, great nations had arisen, powerful and 
civilized governments had been established. 

So far, then, we have the light of History 
shining with comparative clearness over a 
period of 2,000 years before the Christian 
era. Beyond that we have a twilight tract 
of time which may be roughly estimated at 
700 years — a period of time lying in the 
dawn of History, at the very beginning 
of which we can dimly see that there were 
already Kings and Princes on the earth. 



g6 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

But this is the outer margin of Time-absolute. 
No farther, with even an approximation 
to the truth, can we measure the order of 
events by the lapse of years. 

But there is a point at which the evidence 
of Archaeology begins before the evidence of 
History has closed. There is a border-land 
where both kinds of evidence are found to- 
gether, or rather, where some testimony 
exists of which it is difficult to say whether 
it is the testimony of written documents or 
of the inarticulate monuments of Man. It 
was the habit of one of the most ancient 
nations in the world to record all events in 
the form of pictorial representation. Their 
domestic . habits, their foreign wars, their 
religious beliefs, are thus all presented to 



ORIGIN OF RACES. 97 

the eye. And one of the questions on which 
this testimony bears is a question of para- 
mount importance in determining the anti- 
quity of the Human Family. That question 
is not the rise of Kingdoms, but the 
origin of Races. The varieties of Man 
are a great mystery. The physical dif- 
ferences which these varieties involve may 
be indeed, and often are, much exaggerated. 
Yet, these differences are distinct, and we 
are naturally impelled to ask When and How 
did they begin ? These are two separate 
questions ; but the one bears upon the other. 
The question When stands before the ques- 
tion How. The fundamental problem to be 
solved is this : Can such varieties have 
descended from a single stock ? And if 

H 



98 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

they can, then must not a vast and indefi- 
nite lapse of time have been occupied in 
the gradual development of divergent types ? 
On this question we have no datum on 
which to reason, unless we can ascertain 
how far back in Time-absolute these diver- 
gences had already become established. 
Now, this is the datum which Egypt gives 
us. In one of the most perfect of the 
paintings which have been preserved to us, 
a great Egyptian monarch is symbolically 
represented as ruling with the power of 
life and death over subject races : and these 
are depicted with accurate and characteristic 
likeness. Conspicuous in this group is one 
figure, painted to the life both in form and 
colour, which proves that the race which 



THE NEGRO. 99 



departs most widely from the European 
type, had then acquired exactly the same 
characters which mark it in the present day. 
The Negro kneels at the feet of Sethos I., 
in the same attitude of bondage and sub- 
mission which typifies only too faithfully 
the enduring servitude of his race. The 
blackness of colour, the woolliness of hair, 
the flatness of nose, the projection of the. 
lips, which are so familiar to us, — all these 
had been fully established and developed 
thus early in the known history of the 
world. And this was about 1,400 years 
before the Christian era — that is to say, 
more than 3,200 years ago. I am informed 
by Professor Lepsius (through the kindness 

of Mr. Poole) that there are some still 

1 

H 2 



IOO PRIMEVAL MAN. 

earlier representations of the Negro — referable 
to the " Twelfth Dynasty," or to about 
1,900 B.C. In these it is curious that the 
Negro colour is strongly marked, but not the 
Negro feature. This, however, may be due to 
the unskilfulness of early art, or to the fact, 
too often forgotten, that some African tribes 
— as, for example, the Nubians — have not the 
low flat nose or the projecting lips. Nor 
is this the whole evidence afforded by the 
Egyptian pictures. At periods not much later 
in the history, we have elaborate representa- 
tions of battles with Negro nations, — represen- 
tations which go far to show that the race 
was then more able to maintain a contest 
with other races than it has ever been in 
recent times. And of this a further proof 



MR. BQNOMTS DRAWINGS. 



IOI 



is to be found in the fact, that at a period 




at least 2,000 years B.C. — that is about the 



102 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

time of Abraham — mention is made in hiero- 
glyphic writings of Black or Negro troops 
being raised by an Egyptian king, to assist 
him in the prosecution of a great war. * 

Since, then, the Negro race was already, 
in the days of Abraham, just what it is 
now, what is the time we must <allow for 
the development of this variety of Man, 
supposing it to have descended from a 
common stock ? We have absolutely no 
measurement of time by which to estimate 
the growth of such varieties. We know 
that changes of climate and of food do 

* Drawings by the skilful hands of Mr. Bonomi are given 
on p. ioi and on the Frontispiece in illustration of the facts stated 
in the text. They are taken from an Egyptian temple at 
Beyt-el-Welee, in Nubia, of the reign of Rameses IL> son 
and successor of Sethos I. 



THE ELEMENT OF COLOUR. IO3 

produce upon Mankind some modifications of 
colour, and of features. But we know also 
that such changes are extremely slow. 
Colour is in all the lower animals one of 
the least constant — that is to say, one of 
the most variable, — of external characters ; 
and under circumstances of domestication 
changes of colour are sometimes sudden, 
and are connected with causes altogether 
unknown. But we have no evidence to 
show that human colour is liable to changes 
of a like kind. On the contrary, all ex- 
perience seems to point to the conclusion 
that varieties of complexion can only be 
established very gradually, and we have no 
absolute proof that a change from white 
to negro blackness is possible at all. A 



104 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

very able and ingenious writer, whose work 
is unfortunately anonymous,* but whose 
opinions are endorsed by the high authority 
of Mr. Poole, has assumed that this change 
is not within the compass of any natural 
causes, and cannot be accounted for by 
any lapse of time. On this as well as on 
other grounds he adopts the theory that 
Adam was the progenitor of the white 
races only ; and that before the creation of 
Adam, the Black Race had been established 
in the Continent of Africa. He maintains 
that in the Mosaic narrative, contrary to 
the usual interpretation, there are clear indi- 
cations of the existence of pre -Adamite 
races. This theory undoubtedly explains 

* "Genesis of the Earth and of Man." 



SONS OF GOD. 105 



one passage in Genesis, which seems other- 
wise wholly unintelligible, namely, that in 
which mention is made of unions between 
the " Sons of God " and the daughters of 
men. Our author affirms that for the ■" Sons 
of God " we ought to substitute as the true 
meaning in the original, "the servants of 
the gods," or in other words the idolatrous 
races of the world. In like manner the 
daughters of men should be translated, "the 
daughters of the Adamite/' The passage 
would thus refer to intermarriages between 
the children of Adam and the pre-existing 
idolatrous nations of the world. It is true also 
that this theory would remove or diminish 
some other difficulties attending the received 
interpretation. But on the other hand the 



106 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

Unity of Mankind is so deeply interwoven 
with the fundamental doctrines of Chris- 
tianity, as hitherto universally understood, 
that the new difficulties raised are far greater 
than those which would be thus removed. 
No doubt it may be said that the Unity of 
Mankind as a species, does not necessarily 
depend upon descent from a single pair; and 
it is true that this Unity is a matter of fact 
which cannot under any hypothesis be 
denied ; because we know that the barrier 
of hybrid barrenness which nature sets 
against the mixture of different species 
does not impede the amalgamation of even 
the most diverse varieties of Man. It is there- 
fore certain that in this sense, which involves 
the full possession of a common nature, "God 



DESCENT FROM A SINGLE PAIR. ioy 

hath made of one blood all nations of men 
for to dwell on all the face of the earth." It 
is of course conceivable that this full com- 
munity of nature may have been given by the 
Creator to two or more original pairs. But all 
the evidence of science tends to the conclusion 
that each well-marked species has spread from 
some one centre of creation, and presumably 
from a single pair. There is no clashing 
between this evidence and the testimony 
of Revelation as that testimony has hitherto 
been interpreted. Strongly marked as the 
varieties of Man now are, the variation is 
strongest in respect to colour, which in all 
organisms is notoriously the most liable to 
modification and to change. And in this 
feature of colour it is remarkable that ^we 



108 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

have every possible variety of tint from the 
fairest to the blackest races, so that the one 
extreme passes into the other by small and 
insensible gradations. As regards structure, 
the differences between different varieties 
of Man are comparatively trifling, and it 
may safely be affirmed that all the efforts 
of anatomists and physiologists who have 
been most determined to magnify every 
point of variation, have utterly failed to 
render it impossible or improbable that all 
men have had a common ancestor. But in 
exact proportion as we hold to this conclu- 
sion as the only satisfactory explanation of 
the Unity of Man, must we be prepared 
to accept the high probability, if not the cer- 
tainty, of the very great antiquity of the Race. 



EVIDENCE OF LANGUAGE. IO9 

Next comes the science of Language, of 
which those who have made it a special study- 
affirm, that it affords the most conclusive 
evidence of all, that the articulate voice of 
Man has been sounding in the world during 
vast though indefinite periods of time. "The 
evidence of language," says Professor Max 
Miiller, " is irrefragable, and it is the ,only 
evidence worth listening to with regard to 
ante-historical periods," And what does this 
evidence go to prove ? Let us take one 
example. "There was a time," says the same 
author, " when the ancestors of the Celts, the 
Germans, the Slavonians, the Greeks, and 
Italians, the Persians and Hindus, were living 
together beneath the same roof — separate 
from the ancestors of the Semitic (Hebrew) 



IIO PRIMEVAL MAN. 



and Turanian races."* The principle on 
which the evidence of language is interpreted 
is very simple. The sounds or words by 
which men designate things are for the most 
part arbitrary, and therefore conventional. 
The sign and the thing signified have no 
natural or necessary connection. The names 
of a very few animals may be imitations of 
their voice. No argument, for example, could 
be founded on the wor^i Cuckoo being used 
by the most diverse tribes to designate a bird 
which sounds these two syllables in its cry. 
But such cases are very rare even in the 
names of beasts. Wherever the same thing is 
denoted by the same word, and where there 
is no natural connection between them, there 

* "Chips from a German Workshop," vol. i. pp. 63, 64. 



MAX MULLER S CONCLUSIONS. Ill 

must have been once a common under- 
standing amongst men who dwelt together, as 
to the meaning of that sound. And when 
this common understanding is found to affect 
the nearest relationships of life, and the 
animals domesticated in primeval times, the 
evidence of ancient consanguinity is complete. 
In this case "the terms for God, for house, 
for father, mother, son, daughter, for dog and 
cow, for heart and tears, for axe and tree, 
identical in all the Indo-Germanic words, are 
like the watchwords of soldiers. " But when 
was it that the fathers of nations now so far 
apart as Germans and Hindus were living 
together under one roof? This is a question 
which, in the terms of Time-absolute, no 
man can answer. Only we know that before 



112 PRIMEVAL MAX. 

the time of Abraham the languages of those 
great leading stocks must have been nearly 
as far apart as they are now. Professor Max 
Miiller is of opinion that to the Hymns of 
the Vedas a later date cannot be assigned 
than 1,200 B.C. Homer and Hesiod are in all 
probability referable to a later date, but not 
so much later as to cast any doubt on the 
conclusion that both Greek and Sanskrit were 
then perfectly developed. Those who have 
studied the growth of languages, and the 
mysterious laws by which that growth is 
regulated, are lost in conjecture as to the 
lapse of time which may probably have been 
required to account for the wonderful creations 
of Human Speech. 

Next comes the evidence of Geology, which 



EVIDENCE OF GEOLOGY. 113 

only in very recent years has been found to 
speak with any distinctness upon the question 
of Man's Antiquity. Not that there is any 
change in the general bearing of that evidence 
as it stood before. There is none whatever. 
The evidence of Geology has always been, 
that among all the creatures which have in 
succession been formed to live upon this 
earth, and to enjoy it, Man is the latest born. 
This great fact is still the fundamental truth 
in the History of Creation : that history, as 
Geology has revealed it, has been a history 
of successive Creations, and of successive 
Destructions, — Old Forms of Life perishing, 
and New Forms appearing, so that the whole 
face of nature has been many times renewed. 
But until very lately it was supposed that 

I 



114 PRIMEVAL MAN. 



these vast cycles of change had been finally 
completed before Man appeared. And as 
regards fresh creations this supposition is still 
supported by the testimony of science. So 
far as we yet know, no New Form of Life 
has been created since the Highest Form 
was made. But it now appears that since 
that event many Old Forms have died. The 
Cycles of Creation had closed, but not the 
Cycles of Destruction. Of itself, it might be 
supposed that this fact has little bearing 
upon the question of Time. The extinction 
of some noxious animals in particular parts 
of the globe, as for example in our own 
country, has taken place within the period 
of history, and some few species of wingless 
birds, as the Dodo and the Great Auk, have 



EXTINCTION OF ANIMALS. IIS 

been destroyed in very recent times. But 
these have been extinctions effected through 
the agency of Man. What is now proved 
is that a whole group or fauna of great 
quadrupeds have utterly perished since Man 
appeared. And the causes of this destruc- 
tion seem to have been of the same kind 
as the causes which in all former ages had 
produced similar results — viz., great changes 
in the climates of the globe, and great 
movements affecting the configuration of its 
surface. In these last circumstances lies the 
real stress ol the evidence derived from the 
new discoveries. It is conceivable that old 
kinds of Elephant and Rhinoceros may 
have roamed over Northern Europe when 
its surface and its climate were the same as 

I 2 



Il6 PRIMEVAL MAX. 



they now are. It is less probable that the 
small streams which now exist in England 
should have harboured herds of Hippopotami. 
But the position in which the remains of 
these great animals are found indicates that 
since they flourished there have been con- 
siderable changes in physical geography. It 
indicates, too, that a great change of climate 
has accompanied certain changes in the con- 
figuration of land and sea. I know no better 
example of the evidence to this effect than 
one which is very easily accessible in our own 
country. We have only to go down to the 
pleasant shores of Devon, and to one of the 
pleasantest spots upon those shores — the 
south-western promontory of Torbay. Over- 
hanging the little harbour of Brixham, where 



BRIXHAM CAVE. 117 

two hundred years ago William of Orange 
landed, there is a steep limestone hill, at 
the foot and on the face of which the houses 
of the town are built. Close to the summit 
a few years ago a cavernous hollow was 
discovered. It extends a considerable distance 
through the limestone rocks, and no one who 
goes through it can fail to see that it has 
once been the bed of a stream. The smooth 
surfaces worn by the long action of running 
water are perfectly preserved, and the rounded 
pebbles which were found in the bed of this 
ancient stream are additional evidences of 
the fact. Now let any one stand at the 
entrance, or at the exit of this cavern and 
cast his eye on the surrounding landscape. 
Whence can this stream have flowed, and 



Il8 PRIMEVAL MAN. 



whither ? The hill is now separated from 
all higher ground by valleys which are at 
least sixty feet below the level of the cave. 
It is evident at a glance that the whole 
physical geography of the country must have 
been different, when running water channelled 
this limestone hill. Yet in this cave the 
works of Man, flint arrow-heads and knives, 
were found, along with the bones of the 
Elephant, the Rhinoceros, the Bear, the 
Hysena, and the Reindeer. As regards one 
of these animals, the whole leg was found 
together, showing that the bones had been 
covered with flesh when they were carried 
by the stream. This is only one case out of 
very many which have now been discovered 
in various parts of Europe. 



THREE GENERAL CONCLUSIONS. 119 

I need not here go farther into detail as 
regards this kind of evidence. Suffice it to 
say, that all the facts tend to these three 
general conclusions: 1st, that Man appeared 
in Northern Europe at a time when it was 
covered with great quadrupeds now wholly 
extinct ; 2d, that the surface of the Earth 
has since that period been subjected to modi- 
fications, which imply great changes in phy- 
sical geography ; and 3d, that the period 
when those animals flourished, and when Man 
co-existed with them, was one when a colder 
climate prevailed. Now no one conclusion of 
geological science is more firmly established 
than this, that there was a time, compara- 
tively very recent, when an Arctic climate 
prevailed far down into latitudes which are 



120 PRIMEVAL MAX. 



now temperate ; and when a great part of 
Northern Europe and of our own islands was 
submerged under a Glacial Sea. This sea 
was ploughed by floating icebergs, which as 
they melted dropped their rocks and boulders 
upon the bottom. That bottom has since 
been raised again into dry land, and these 
boulders now interrupt the drainer in culti- 
vated fields, and strew the surface of our 
wildest moors. Many concurring indications 
go far to prove that it was when this Glacial 
Period had nearly passed away, when a 
milder climate was beginning to prevail over 
the land which we now know, that Man also 
began to find his way into Northern Europe. 
There he sought his living among herds of 
animals, of which the greater number are now 



ORDER OF EVENTS. 121 

extinct and a few remain only in those 
regions which are still Arctic. This is the 
order of events as we can read it with 
tolerable certainty in the language of Time- 
relative. But we have little means of 
knowing what relation this order of events 
bears to Time-absolute. It is still disputed 
among Geologists how far the causes of geo- 
logical change were once more intense in 
their action than they are now. It is quite 
certain that during the passing away of a 
glacial climate, the cutting power of rivers 
must have been intensified by the increasing 
rapidity with which ice and snows were 
melted. There are also facts connected with 
the position in which remains of the extinct 
animals are often found, which cannot, in my 



PRIMEVAL MAN. 



opinion, be explained, except by violent and 
sudden action since or during the period of 
their entombment. Great caves, packed closely 
from floor to roof with the bones of the 
Hippopotamus and Rhinoceros ; other caves, 
equally full of the bones of extinct Oxen, 
are proofs of some diluvial action of which 
Man has had no experience in historic times. 
But, even allowing for the greater activity of 
geological causes, the time required for such 
changes of climate has in all probability been 
very great. And when we consider that 
many of these evidences of Geology apply to 
the New World as well as to the Old, we can- 
not fail to see that the proofs of a very high 
antiquity for the Human Race are proofs of 
a cumulative character, gathered along several 



RESULT NECESSARILY INDEFINITE. I23 

different paths of investigation, and all 
tending to one general result. 

That result, however, is necessarily inde- 
finite, and cannot be expressed in years. Of 
the evidence from the dispersion of the 
Human Race, it may be fairly said that we 
do not know how rapidly Man may have 
spread when the beasts of the chase were yet 
unacquainted with his destructive powers, 
when they probably swarmed in innumerable 
herds, and when from their tameness they 
must have fallen an easy prey. Of the 
evidence from Language it may again be said 
that we do not know how rapidly the forms 
of human speech may have altered among 
tribes wandering and unsettled, rapidly 
changing place, and as rapidly accommodating 



124 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

themselves to new scenes and new necessities. 
In like manner, of the evidence from Geology 
it may be said that we do not know how 
rapidly changes of climate may have been 
effected if the agencies which determine the 
distribution of Sea and Land were more 
active than they have been in historic times. 
All these are pleas in mitigation of extreme 
demands in point of time, and they are pleas 
which may be fairly urged. But when all 
due allowance has been made for the consid- 
erations to which they point, there remains a 
weight and concurrence of authority in favour 
of a long chronology which grows and in- 
creases in the minds of all who have studied 
each one of the separate branches of inquiry. 
For my own part I see no reason to be 



GEOLOGICAL TIME. 



jealous of the conclusions of science in this 
matter. The question is, after all, a small 
one. It is a question of a few thousand years 
more or less ; and thousands of years are as 
less than seconds in the Creative Days. The 
estimates of Time which have been given us 
by Geology have been compared with the 
estimates of Space given us by Astronomy. 
But there is an important difference. There 
is no visible limit to Astronomical Space. 
The apparent magnitude of the largest of the 
Heavenly Bodies shows that millions of miles 
are quantities inappreciable even to our eyes, 
and that worlds are scattered like dust through 
illimitable depths. But it is not so with Geo- 
logical Time. Its periods are indeed very 
long, but the beginning of them can be seen. 



126 PRIMEVAL MAN. 



It is not a boundless ocean, it is only a very 
broad sea. On the other side of it there rise 
the mountains of a Lifeless Land. Successive 
creations mark the distance between us and 
them, and although we cannot say what that 
distance is, we can say that it is a finite 
distance — that beyond a boundary which we 
can see, the world was not a world such 
as we now live in, but a world com- 
paratively "without form and void." The 
question of Man's Antiquity involves no 
attempt to measure the breadth of this great 
space, but only the breadth of a little bay or 
creek, close to the shores on which we are 
now standing. Be this breadth greater or 
smaller by one, two, or three, or four, or five, 
or ten thousand years, its relative place in the 



CAUTION NECESSARY. 127 



great Tracts of Creative Time undergoes no 
change whatever. Man is the latest work. 
Recent discoveries have thrown no doubt on 
this, but, on the contrary, have all tended 
to confirm it. I know of no one moral or 
religious truth which depends on a short 
estimate of Man's antiquity. On the contrary, 
a high estimate of that antiquity is of great 
value in its bearing upon another question 
much more important than the question of 
time can ever be — viz., the question of 
the Unity of the Human Race. We must 
indeed be very cautious in identifying the 
interests of Religion with any interpretation 
(however certain we may have hitherto as- 
sumed it to be) of the language of Scripture 
upon subjects which a^c accessible to scien- 



128 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

tific research. We know from past experience 
how foolish and how futile it is to do so. 
But unquestionably the Unity of the Human 
Race, in respect to origin, is not easily separ- 
ated from some principles which are of high 
value in our understanding both of moral 
duty and of religious truth. And precisely in 
proportion as we value our belief in that 
Unity ought we to be ready and willing to 
accept any evidence on the question of Man's 
Antiquity. The older the Human Family can 
be proved to be, the more possible and pro- 
bable it is that it has descended from a single 
pair. My own firm belief is that all scientific 
evidence is in favour of this conclusion ; and I 
regard all new proofs of the Antiquity of Man 
as tending to establish it on a firmer basis. 



PART IV. 

man's primitive condition. 

A S the question of Man's Origin is different 
from the question of his Antiquity, and 
as the Antiquity of Man is a different question 
from his Primitive Condition, so again the last 
question includes within itself several different 
matters of inquiry. There is first the question, 
What consciousness had Primeval Man of 
Moral Obligation, and what communion with 
his Creator ? Next there is the question, 
What were his innate powers of Intellect or 

K 



130 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

Understanding ? And, thirdly, there is the 
question, What was his condition in respect 
to Knowledge, whether as the result of in- 
tuition, or as the result of teaching ? It is a 
fatal fault in the discussion of this subject, as 
conducted both by Archbishop Whately and 
by Sir J. Lubbock, that these distinctions are . 
either not seen or not distinctly kept in view. 
Perhaps, indeed, it may be thought that the 
Savage-theory is independent of such close 
analysis. But this is by no means the case. 
The distinction between the possession of 
Faculties capable of acquiring knowledge, and 
the possession of knowledge actually acquired, 
is a fundamental distinction. Not less funda- 
mental is the distinction between a creature 
who is morally good but intellectually un- 



SIR JOHN LUBBOCK S ARGUMENT. 131 

informed, and a creature who is both igno- 
rant and vicious. Sir J. Lubbock speaks of 
Primeval Man as having been in a condition 
of " utter barbarism." But no one, speaking 
philosophically, has a right to use such terms 
as " barbarism " and " civilization " without 
some definition of their meaning. What were 
those Faculties which made the first creature 
who possessed them " worthy to be called a 
Man?" A Mind capable of reason, disposed 
to reason, and able to acquire, to accumulate, 
and to transmit knowledge, — this is the dis- 
tinctive attribute of Man. The first Being 
"worthy to be so called," must have had such 
a mind. But it could not properly be said of 
such a Being, on the ground merely of his 
ignorance of mechanical arts, that he was in 



132 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

a condition of u utter barbarism/' if he were 
at the same time conscious of moral obliga- 
tions and obedient to them. It is, of course, 
open to a theorist to assume that the First 
Man was both ignorant and bad, or that the 
sense of right and wrong was rudimentary 
and wholly uninformed. But all I desire to 
point out here is, that there is no necessary 
connection between a state of mere childhood 
in respect to knowledge, and a state of " utter 
barbarism " — words which, if they have any 
definite meaning at all, imply the lowest 
moral, as well as the lowest intellectual con- 
dition. Consequently no proof, if proof there 
be, that Primeval Man was ignorant of the 
industrial arts can afford the smallest pre- 
sumption that he was also ignorant of duty 



FUNDAMENTAL OBJECTIONS TO IT. 133 

or ignorant of God. This is a fundamental 
objection to the whole scope of Sir J. Lubbock's 
argument. It interposes an impassable gulf 
between his premises and his conclusion. 

But there is another objection equally 
fundamental. Traces or remains of barbarism, 
properly so called, that is, traces of customs 
savage or immoral, in the usages of civilized 
nations, may be an indication of the fact that 
those nations, or the races from which they 
sprang, have passed through a stage of 
barbarism. But it affords no presumption 
whatever that barbarism was the Primeval 
Condition of Man, any more than the traces 
of Feudalism in the laws of modern Europe 
prove that feudal principles were born with 
the Human Race. All such customs may 



134 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

have been, and as many think, probably h 
been, not Primeval but Medieval, that is tc 
say, the result oi time and 01 developm^ 
and that development a development of cor- 

:';::. To assume that they were or:;;:: 
or that they were even better or less bar- 
barous than others which preceded the:::. 
is to assume the whole quest:::: in dispute. 
Yet this assumption runs through ah Sir J. 
Lubbock's arguments. Wherever a brutal or 
savage custom prevails it is at once assumec 
be a sample of the original condition of Man- 
kind. And this in the teeth of facts which 
prove that many of such customs not only 
may have been, but must have been, the result 
of corruption. Take cannibalism as one : t 
these. Sir J. Lubbock se^:::s t:> ad::::: that 



CANNIBALISM. 135 



this loathsome practice was not primeval, 
probably because he considers it as un- 
natural.* And so it is, — that is to say, it 
is against the better nature of Man ; but the 
fact of its existence proves that within the 
limits of that nature there are elements liable 
to perversions even so horrible as this. And 
so we come upon the fact of the two natures 
of Man, and of the power of the worst parts 
of his nature to overcome the best. It is 
thus that customs the most cruel and 
depraved become established. But if this be 
the explanation, and the only possible ex- 
planation, of cannibalism, is it not evident 
that this may also be the explanation of 
other customs which are violent and horrible 

* "Prehistoric Times," p. 371. 



136 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

only in a less degree ? — Cruel rites of 
worship, and savage customs as regards 
marriage and the relation of the sexes, 
come under the same category.* Canni- 
balism is only an extreme case of a general 
law, and it is a crucial test of the fallacy 
of a whole class of arguments commonly 
assumed by those who support the Savage- 
theory respecting the Primeval Condition of 
Mankind. 

On the other hand, I think it cannot be 
denied that the argument of Whately is 
equally defective in failing to recognise the 
essential distinctions to which I have referred. 

* Much stress is laid on these by Sir J. Lubbock. Yet 
many of the customs he refers to, such as Bride -catching, 
although they may have arisen in very early times, cannot 
possibly have been Primeval in the strict sense of that term. 



whately's argument defective. 137 

His assertion, repeated over and over again, 
is that mere savages "never did and never 
could raise themselves, unaided, into a higher 
condition." Now it may be perfectly true 
that Man never could " unaided " discover 
religious truth, or rise to any adequate idea 
of the nature, or of the demands, of moral 
obligation ; and yet it may be wholly untrue 
that he is equally incompetent to discover the 
physical laws of nature, or to find out by 
mechanical skill how to adapt them to his 
own use. Again, Whately admits, that "when 
men have once reached a certain stage in 
the advance towards civilization, it is then 
possible for them (under favourable circum- 
stances) to advance further and further in the 
same direction." But there is no attempt to 



I38 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

define either what civilization in this sense 
means, or to specify what kind and what 
amount of preliminary instruction is the 
minimum from which further advance is 
rendered possible. If by civilization is meant 
a knowledge of the industrial arts, the doc- 
trine that Man never did and never could 
" unaided " raise himself from one step in 
mechanical invention to another, is a doctrine 
involving two separate assertions which re- 
quire to be separately examined. Of these 
ttvo assertions, the first, that Savages never 
have " raised themselves," is an assertion 
which, from its very nature, it is difficult if 
not impossible to prove. Whately defies the 
supporter of Development to produce a single 
case where this has been actually done. Sir 



LUBBOCK S REPLY TO IT. 139 

J. Lubbock replies by defying his opponent 
to show that it has not been done and done 
often. He urges, and urges as it seems to 
me with truth, that the great difficulty of 
teaching many savages the arts of civilized 
life, is no proof whatever that the various 
degrees of advance towards the knowledge 
of those arts which are actually found among 
semi-barbarous nations, may not have been 
of strictly indigenous growth. Thus it 
appears that one tribe of Red Indians, 
called " Mandans, " practised the art of 
fortifying their towns. Surrounding tribes, 
although they saw the advantages derived 
from this art, yet never practised it, and 
never learned it. Whately, fixing his eyes 
on the ruder tribes, says, " See how clear it 



140 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

is that savages are utterly unteachable." 
His opponents, fixing their eyes on the 
more advanced tribes, say, " See how clear 
it is that men once savage can invent and 
practise useful arts." Whately says, " Prove 
to me, first, that these Mandans had ever 
been as savage as their neighbours; and 
secondly, that they had raised themselves." 
Sir J. Lubbock replies that on the conditions 
laid down by Whately no such proof is 
possible. If any record could be found of 
the former condition of the Mandans, the 
very existence of such a record would prove 
former contact with civilized peoples, and if 
such contact were proved, Whately would 
attribute to such contact the improvement 
which is observed. : On the other hand, if 



ORIGIN OF MECHANICAL ARTS. 141 

the Mandans had "raised themselves" from 
a more savage condition, without any teaching 
from more civilized races, there could be no 
record of the fact. The same objection 
applies to the demand made by Whately as 
regards all other races among whom different 
mechanical arts have been found established. 
It is impossible by counter assertions to settle 
dogmatically the origin of such arts, and the 
absence of recorded cases of indigenous ad- 
vance is itself rather favourable than adverse 
to the theory of those who assert that such 
advance is possible, and has actually taken 
place. It is precisely when this advance has 
been most strictly indigenous that the pre- 
servation of the fact by record would become 
impossible. 



142 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

I do not agree, therefore, with the late 
Archbishop of Dublin, that we are entitled 
to assume it as a fact that, as regards the 
mechanical arts, no savage race has ever 
raised itself. The other assertion that no 
such race ever could so raise itself, is 
confessedly a theory, and a theory the truth 
of which is by no means self-evident. In 
the first place, when the possibility of 
progress is admitted, provided some elemen- 
tary instruction is supposed as a foundation 
on which to work, it is evident that we are 
dealing with a proposition altogether hazy, 
unless there be some clear definition of the 
nature and amount of this elementary 
instruction which is demanded. Whately says 
that " the earliest generations of mankind 



FORM OF DIVINE INSTRUCTION. 1 43 

had received only very limited, and what 
may be called elementary instruction, enough 
merely to enable them to make further 
advances afterwards by the exercise of their 
natural powers." But how much was this 
" enough ? " And what is meant by " in- 
struction," as distinguished from inborn or 
intuitive powers of observation and of 
reasoning ? May not this have been the 
form in which the Creator first " instructed " 
Man ? For here it is important to observe 
that in direct proportion as we assume Man's 
Primitive Condition to have been such as 
to require elementary teaching, in the same 
proportion do we suppose that his primitive 
condition in respect to intellect was low and 
weak. Accordingly, Whately assumes as an 



144 PRIMEVAL MAN, 

indisputable fact, that Man has no instincts 
such as enable the lower animals to construct 
nests, and cells, and lairs. My own belief 
is, that this is an assumption which is not 
only unproved, but one which in all pro- 
bability is false. As Whately himself admits, 
" Man is an animal " as well as the creatures 
that are below him. It is true that he has 
not instincts of the same kind as they have. 
But this is no proof whatever that he has 
not, and had not originally, instincts which 
stand in strict correlation with the peculiarities 
of his higher physical organization. This is 
a department of inquiry which has been far 
too much neglected both by physiologists and 
by metaphysicians. There are many facts 
which go far to prove that Man has, and 



IMPLEMENTS PECULIAR TO MAN. 145 

must always have had, instincts which afford 
all that is required as a starting-ground for 
advance in the mechanical arts. Few persons 
have reflected on how much is involved in 
the most purely instinctive acts, such as the 
throwing of a stone, or the wielding of a 
stick as a weapon of offence. Both these 
simple acts involve the great principle of the 
use of artificial tools. Even in the most 
rudimentary form, the use of an implement 
fashioned for a special purpose is absolutely 
peculiar to Man, and arises necessarily and 
instinctively out of the structure of his body. 
The bodies of the lower animals are so 
constructed that such implements as they 
are capable of directing are all supplied in 
the form of bodily organs. All effects which 

L 



\ 



146 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

th^y desire to produce, or are capable of 
producing, are effected directly by the use 
of those organs under the guidance of 
implanted instincts. There are some very 
curious cases among the lower animals of a 
near approach to the principle involved in 
the use of tools — that is to say, the use of 
natural force through artificial means. Thus 
the common Grey or Hooded Crow is con- 
stantly in the habit of lifting shell-fish to a 
certain height in the air, and then letting 
them fall upon the rocks of the shore, in 
order to break the shells. Some species of 
Monkey will even use any stone which may 
be at hand for the purpose of striking and 
breaking a nut The Elephant tears branches 
from the trees and uses them as an artificial 



GULF BETWEEN MAN AND THE BRUTES. I47 

tail to fan himself and to keep off the flies. 
But between these rudiments of intellectual 
perception and the next step — that of 
adapting and fashioning an instrument for a 
particular purpose, — there is a gulf in which 
lies the whole immeasurable distance between 
Man and the brutes. In no case whatever 
do they ever use an implement made by 
themselves as an intermediate agency between 
their bodily organs and the work which they 
desire to do. Man, on the contrary, is so 
constructed that in almost everything he 
desires to do he must employ an agency 
intermediate between his bodily organs and 
the effect which he wishes to produce. But 
this necessity, which in one aspect is a 
physical disability, is correlated with a mind 



148 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

capable of Invention, and with certain 

implanted instincts which involve all the 

rudiments of mechanical skill. The man who 

first lifted a stone and threw it, practised an 

art which not one of the lower animals is 

capable of practising. This is an act which 

in all probability is as strictly instinctive and 

natural to Man as it is to a Dog to bite, or 

to a Bull to charge. Yet the act involves 

the idea and the knowledge of projectile 

force, and of the arts by which direction can 

be given to that force. The wielding of a 

stick is, in all probability, an act equally 

of primitive intuition, and from this to the 

throwing of a stick, and the use of javelins, 

is an easy and natural transition. Simple as 

these acts are, they involve both physical 



INSTINCTIVE IDEAS. 149 

and mental powers capable of all the 
developments which we see in the most 
advanced industrial arts. These acts involve 
the instinctive idea of the constancy of 
natural causes, and the capacity of thought 
which gives men the conviction that what 
has happened under given conditions will 
under the same conditions always happen 
again. Did Dr. Whately mean that Man 
must have been instructed by God how to 
throw a stone, or to wield a stick, or to 
hurl a javelin, or to build a hut ? And if so, 
at what point did such lessons in mechanics 
stop ? Is it not evident that the more perfect 
we suppose the first man to have been, so far 
as regards at least his powers of thought, 
of observation, and of reflection, the less 



150 PRIMEVAL MAN. 



needful is it to suppose that the few and 
simple arts necessary for the sustenance of 
his life were communicated to him in any 
other form than that of intuitive powers of 
perception and discovery? 

And here it is important to observe that 
even if savage races be taken as the type 
of man's Primeval Condition, the evidence 
afforded by these races is all in favour of the 
conclusion that as regards his characteristic 
mental powers, Man has always been Man, 
and nothing less. There is quite as much in- 
genuity and skill in the manufacture of a 
knife of flint, as in the manufacture of a 
knife of iron. And the skill displayed by the 
men who used stone implements is not con- 
fined to that which is involved in the selection 



INSTANCES OF SAVAGE SKILL. 151 

of mineral substances suitable for the purpose. 
That skill is also eminently displayed in the 
use made of those stone implements after 
they had been fashioned. The smaller imple- 
ments of bone, or of horn, or of wood, which 
the stone knives and hatchets were employed 
to make, are often highly ingenious, and 
sometimes eminently beautiful. The truth is 
that high qualities of reasoning and ready 
faculties of observation are called forth in 
the inverse ratio of the acquired knowledge 
with which they are provided and from which 
they start. The great ingenuity and resource 
shown by many of the rudest tribes in their 
weapons, and the sense of beauty evinced by 
them in the choice and in the invention of 
ornamental forms, have hardly been suf- 



152 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

ficiently appreciated. It is impossible, for 
example, to read the description given by Sir 
J. Richardson of the bows and arrows of the 
Eskimo without being struck by the admi- 
rable skill with which their scanty resources, 
and their limited command of natural mate- 
rial, are turned to the very best account. 
The throwing-stick of the Australian Savage 
is a most ingenious application of the prin- 
ciple of the lever. The boomerang must have 
been discovered, as so many other discoveries 
are made among ourselves, by pure accident — 
by some savage throwing a crooked branch, 
and by his observing its curious and unex- 
pected flight. But every one of these inven- 
tions and discoveries involves and exhibits in 
full operation the peculiar and characteristic 



GREATNESS OF EARLY INVENTIONS. 153 

gifts of the human intellect. The same gifts 
and the same powers start in the case of each 
new generation from a higher vantage-ground 
of inherited, and therefore of accumulated 
knowledge ; and it is thus that, without any 
change in their own nature, and even without 
any increase in their own inherent strength, 
they attain gradually to higher and more 
complicated results. And if we are to assume 
with the supporters of the Savage-theory 
that Man has himself invented all he now 
knows, then the very earliest inventions of 
our race must have been the most wonderful 
of all, and the richest in the fruits they bore. 
The men who first discovered the use of fire, 
and the use of those grasses which we now 
know under the name of corn, were dis- 



154 PRIMEVAL MAN. 



coverers compared with whom, as regards the 
value of their ideas to the world, Faraday 
and Wheatstone are but the inventors of 
ingenious toys. 

It may possibly be true, as Whately argues, 
that Man never could have discovered these 
things without divine instruction. If so, it is 
fatal to the Savage-theory. But it is equally 
fatal to that Theory if we assume the opposite 
position, and suppose that the noblest dis- 
coveries ever made by Man were made by 
him in primeval times. 

On these, as well as on other grounds, I 
have never attached much importance to 
Whately's argument. I do not mean to say 
that the conclusion to which it points may 
not possibly be true, but it is a conclusion 



MAN CAPABLE OF DEGRADATION. 155 

which I look upon as incapable of positive 
proof. 

The question of Man's Primitive Condition 
must therefore be approached from another 
side. We can only hope to reach the Un- 
known by reasoning from the Known ; and, 
starting from this ground, we have the 
indisputable fact that Man is capable of 
Degradation. This is a subject which, as 
it appears to me, Sir J. Lubbock deals 
with in the most cursory and superficial 
manner. In fact, as far as it is possible 
to do so, he avoids it altogether. In his 
work on " Prehistoric Man " a single page 
exhausts all he has to say on one of the most 
prominent facts of History and of Nature, and 
this page is headed, " No Evidence of Degra- 



L$6 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

dation." Yet nothing in the Natural History 
of Man can be more certain than that both 
morally, and intellectually, and physically he 
can, and he often does, sink from a higher 
to a lower level. This is true of Man both 
collectively and individually — of men and of 
societies of men. Some regions of the world 
are strewn with the monuments of civilizations 
which have passed away. Rude and barba- 
rous tribes stare with wonder on the remains 
of Temples, of which they cannot conceive 
the purpose, and of Cities which are the dens 
of beasts. It is not necessary to assume, as 
it has sometimes been assumed, that there 
is a law of decay affecting communities as 
certain in its operation as the law which 
operates on the individual frame. It is enough 



MORAL AND MENTAL DEGRADATION. 157 

to note the indisputable fact that men are lia- 
ble to degradation and decline, — and this even 
as regards the knowledge and the practice of 
those industrial arts on which the very exis- 
tence of large populations may depend. As 
regards moral character the possibility and the 
fact of degradation is not less certain. It is a 
result only too common and familiar, both as 
regards individuals and societies of men. In 
truth this kind of decline almost always pre- 
cedes the other. The higher elements of civili- 
zation depend on qualities of the mind. It is 
by moral and intellectual force that all the 
triumphs of civilization are achieved. When 
that force declines, the agencies of degradation 
establish their ascendency, and the complete- 
ness with which they have done their work is 



I58 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

one of the standing wonders of the world. 
No doubt, the ancient civilizations which have 
been so utterly destroyed were in many cases 
brought to a violent, and as it may be 
argued, to an accidental end. They were 
overrun and swept away by the rush of 
barbarous hordes. But these are accidents 
which did not happen to civilized nations so 
long as their civilization was yet undecayed. 
I am far, however, from denying the powerful 
influence of external conditions in favouring 
the development of the peaceful arts, or, on 
the contrary, in arresting that development, 
or even in destroying it when it had been 
long established. Nor am I disposed to keep 
in the background the effects produced on 
ancient civilizations by the wars and the great 



CAUSES OF DEGRADATION. 159 

primeval migrations of our race. On the con- 
trary, these are facts which form the next 
step in the argument I am now maintaining 
— a step which goes far to connect the pos- 
sibility of degradation with the known causes 
which have operated, and in the very 
nature of things must have operated, in 
producing it. 

For it matters not which of the two theories 
we adopt in regard to the Origin of the 
Human Race, whether we suppose it to have 
proceeded from one or from two, or even 
from several different centres of creation ; it 
matters not whether we suppose with Sir J. 
Lubbock that the " first being worthy to be 
called a Man " was born of some inferior 
creature, or whether we believe with Whately, 



l6o PRIMEVAL MAN. 

that he was truly human in his powers, 
but required some " elementary instruction to 
enable his faculties to begin their work." 
In any case we may safely assume that Man 
must have begun his course in some one or 
more of those portions of the earth which are 
genial in climate, rich in natural fruits, and 
capable of yielding the most abundant return 
to the very simplest arts. It is under such 
conditions that the first establishment of the 
human race can be most easily understood ; 
nay, it is under such conditions only that it is 
conceivable at all. And as these are the con- 
ditions which would favour the first establish- 
ment, and the most rapid increase of Man, so 
also are these the conditions under which 
knowledge would most rapidly accumulate, 



THE LAW OF INCREASE. l6l 

and the earliest possibilities of material civi- 
lization would arise. 

Now what are the changes of external cir- 
cumstance which first, in the natural course 
of things, would bring an adverse influence to 
bear upon Mankind ? Here again we are on 
firm ground, because we know one great 
cause which has been always operating, and 
we know its natural and inevitable effects. 
This cause is simply the law of increase. It 
is the consequence of that law that popula- 
tion is always pressing upon the limits of 
subsistence. Hence the necessity of migra- 
tions, and the force which has propelled suc- 
cessive generations of men farther and farther, 
in ever-widening circles round the original 
centre or centres of their birth. Then, as it 

M 



162 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

would always be the weaker tribes who would 
be driven from the ground which had become 
overstocked, and as the lands to which they 
went forth were less and less hospitable in 
climate and productions, the struggle for 
life would be always harder. And so it 
always happens in the natural and necessary 
course of things, that the races which were 
driven farthest would be the rudest — the 
most engrossed in the pursuits of mere 
animal existence. 

And now, does not this key of principle 
fit into and explain all the facts ? Do they 
not seem in the light of that explanation to 
take form and order ? Is it not true that the 
lowest and rudest tribes in the population 
of the globe have been found at the farthest 



THE ESKIMO RACE. 163 

extremities of its great Continents, and in the 
distant Islands which would be the last refuge 
of the victims of violence and misfortune ? 
"The New World" is the Continent which 
presents the most uninterrupted stretch of 
habitable land from the highest northern to 
the lowest southern latitude. On the extreme 
north we have the Eskimo,* or Inuit race, 
maintaining human life under conditions of 
extremest hardship, even amid the perpetual 
ice of the Polar Seas. And what a life it 
is ! Watching at the blow-hole of a seal for 
many hours, in a temperature of 75 below 
freezing point, is the constant work of the 

* I have adopted the form of this name (usually spelt 
Esquimaux), which is adopted as the most correct by Sir J. 
Richardson in his work on the Polar Seas. "Inuit" is the 
native Eskimo name for their own race. 

M 2 



t64 primeval man. 

Inuit hunter.* And when at last his prey 
is struck, it is his luxury to feast upon the 
raw blood and blubber. To civilized Man it 
is hardly possible to conceive a life so 
wretched, and in many respects so brutal 
as the life led by this race during the long^ 
lasting night of the arctic winter. Not even 
the most extravagant theorist as regards 
the plurality of Human Origins, can suppose 
that there was an Eskimo Adam — that any 
man was originally created or developed in 
the icy regions round the Pole. Here then 
we have a case beyond all question, of 
races driven by wars and migrations, from 

* Very] curious details on Eskimo hunting, feasting, and 
habits generally are given' in Captain C. F. Hall's most 
interesting work, "Life with the Esquimaux." (Sampson* 
Low, Son, & MarstoH. 1864.) 



NATIVES OF ARCTIC REGIONS. 165 

the more temperate regions of the globe. 

So long as they were still in those 

regions, the ancestors of the Eskimo must 

have lived in another manner, and must have 

had wholly different habits. They may 

have practised such simple agriculture as 

we know was practised among the most 

ancient people who have left their remains 

in the Swiss Lake Dwellings. They may 

have been nomads living on their flocks 

and herds. But neither an agricultural nor a 

pastoral life is possible on the borders of a 

frozen sea. The rigours of the region they 

now inhabit have reduced this people to the 

condition in which we now see them, and 

whatever arts their fathers knew, suited to 

more genial climates, have been, and could 



l66 PRIMEVAL MAN. 



not fail to be, utterly forgotten. It is a very 
remarkable fact that this process, by which 
even the most sterile regions of the globe 
have been peopled, is a process which appears 
to be still in operation. Arctic voyagers have 
long known that there are lands nearer the 
Pole than those which they have hitherto been 
able to reach, and it has been even suspected 
that there exists there a somewhat milder 
climate and a more open sea. A whaling 
ship, which in 1867 reached a more northern 
point than had hitherto been attained, has 
brought the curious information that a tribe 
wandering near Cape Chelagskoi had recently 
driven another tribe before them across the 
Frozen Sea to a land lying so far north that 
only its mountain tops could be occasionally 



NATIVES OF TIERRA DEL FUEGO. 167 

seen from the Siberian Headlands** This 
farther land has never yet been trodden by 
civilized Man ; and if he ever does reach it, 
he will thus probably find it occupied by 
men who may have forgotten how and 
whence their fathers came. 

And now let us pass to the other ex- 
tremity of the great Continent of America — 
to Cape Horn, and to the Island off it, which 
projects its desolate rocks into one of the 
most inhospitable climates in the world. The 
inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego are perhaps 
the most degraded among the races of man- 
kind. How could they be otherwise? "Their 
country," says Mr. Darwin, " is a broken 

* See letter in the Times of December 30, 1S67, from 
Captain Sherard Osborne. 



l68 PRIMEVAL MAN. 



mass of wild rocks, lofty hills, and useless 
forests ; and these are viewed through mists 
and endless storms. The habitable land is 
reduced to the stones of the beach. In search 
of food they are compelled to wander un- 
ceasingly from spot to spot, and so steep is 
the coast that they can only move about in 
their wretched canoes." They are habitual 
cannibals, killing and eating their old women 
before they kill their dogs, for the sufficient 
reason, as explained by themselves — " Doggies 
catch otters, old women no." Of some of these 
people who came round the Beagle in their 
canoes, the same author says — " These were 
the most wretched and miserable creatures 
I anywhere beheld. They were quite naked, 
and even one full-grown woman was absolutely 



darwin's question. 169 

so. It was raining heavily, and the fresh 
water, together with the spray, trickled down 
her body. In another harbour not far dis- 
tant, a woman, who was suckling a new-born 
child, came one day alongside the vessel, and 
remained there out of mere curiosity, whilst 
the sleet fell and thawed on her naked bosom 
and on the skin of her naked baby. These 
poor wretches were stunted in their growth, 
their hideous faces bedaubed with white paint, 
their skins filthy and greasy, their hair 
entangled, their voices discordant, and their 
gestures violent. Viewing such men, one can 
hardly make oneself believe that they are 
fellow-creatures and inhabitants of the same 
world." Well might Darwin add, "Whilst 
beholding these savages one asks, Whence 



170 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

have they come? What could have tempted, 
or what change compelled, a tribe of men 
to leave the fine regions of the North, to 
travel down the Cordillera, or backbone of 
America, to invent and build canoes which 
are not used by the tribes of Chili, Peru, and 
Brazil, and then to enter on one of the most 
inhospitable countries within the limits of the 
globe?" * There can be but one explanation. 
Quarrels and wars between tribe and tribe, 
induced by the mere increase of numbers 
and the consequent pressure on the means of 
subsistence, have been always, ever since Man 
existed, driving the weaker races farther and 
farther from the older settlements of man- 
kind. And when the ultimate points of the 

* Darwin's " Naturalist's Yoyage," ed. 1852, p. 216. 



FUEGIANS CAPABLE OF IMPROVEMENT. 171 

habitable world are reached, the conditions 
of existence cause and necessitate a savage 
and degraded life. Darwin gives the true 
explanation of their condition when he says, 
" How little can the higher powers of the 
mind be brought into play ! What is there 
for imagination to picture, for reason to com- 
pare, for judgment to decide upon?" The 
case of the Fuegians is a case in which there 
can be no doubt whatever of the causes of 
their degraded condition. On every side 

of them, and in proportion as we recede 
from their wretched country, the surrounding 
tribes are less wretched and better acquainted 
with the simpler arts. And it is remarkable 
that in the case of this people we have proof 
of another point of great interest and impor- 



IJ2 PRIMEVAL MAN. 



tance, viz., this — that even the most degraded 
savages have all the perfect attributes of 
humanity, which can be and are developed, 
the moment they are placed under fa- 
vourable conditions. Captain Fitzroy had in 
1830 carried off some of these people to 
England, where they were taught tire habits 
and the arts of civilized life. Of one of 
these who was taken back to his own country 
in the Beagle, Mr. Darwin tells us that his 
"intellect was good," and of another that 
he had a " nice disposition." We see, there- 
fore, that every fact and circumstance 
connected with the Fuegians agrees with 
the supposition that their u utter barbarism " 
was due entirely to the cruel conditions of 
their life, and the wretched country into 



THE POLYNESIAN RACES. 175 

which they had been driven. The Bushmen 
of South Africa are another case in point. 
It seems to be clearly ascertained that they 
belong to the same race as other tribes who 
are far less degraded, and that they are 
simply the descendants of outcasts driven to- 
the woods and rocks* So, again, among the 
great islands of the Pacific, the natives of 
Van Diemen's Land were the most utterly- 
degraded of all the Polynesian races. 

With these facts staring us in the face, 
connecting themselves in an obvious order 
with causes which w r e know to be all 
operating in one direction, is it not absurd 
to argue that the condition of these outcasts 
of the human family can be assumed as 
• Pritchard's "Natural History of Man/' vol. ii. 



174 PRIMEVAL MAN. 



representing the aboriginal condition of Man ? 
Is it not certain that whatever advances 
towards civilization may have been made 
among their progenitors, such advances must 
necessarily have been lost under the conditions 
to w T hich their children are reduced ? Sir J. 
Lubbock urges, in reply to Whately, that 
the low condition of Australian savages affords 
no proof whatever that they could not raise 
themselves, because the materials of improve- 
ment are wanting in that country, which 
affords no cereals, nor animals capable of 
useful domestication. But Sir J. Lubbock 
does not perceive that the same argument 
which shows how improvement could not 
possibly be attained, shows also how degra- 
dation could not possibly be avoided. If 



THE AUSTRALIANS. 175 

with the few resources of the country it was 
impossible for savages to rise, it follows that 
with those same resources it would be 
impossible for a half-civilized race not to 
fall. And as in this case again, unless we 
are to suppose a separate Adam and Eve 
for Van Diemen's Land, its natives must 
originally have come from one or other of 
the great continents where both corn and 
cattle were to be had, it follows that the 
low condition of these natives is much more 
likely to have been the result of degradation 
than of primeval barbarism. Man as an 
animal does not belong to the Fauna of 
Australia. The scientific evidence, therefore, 
is conclusive that he came to it from other 
lands. But it is highly improbable that the 



176 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

circumstances of his arrival in the Islands 
were such as would have enabled him to bring 
either corn or cattle with him. Whatever 
knowledge of these things he had before, 
must necessarily have been lost. The present 
condition, therefore, of the Australian Savage 
in respect to these important elements of 
civilization, affords no presumption whatever 
that it represents the condition of those from 
whom he is descended. There is hardly a 
single fact quoted by Sir J. Lubbock in 
favour of his own theory, which, when 
viewed in connection with the same in- 
disputable principles, does not tell against 
that theory rather than in its favour. 
The facts indeed which I have hitherto 
quoted prove only that forgetfulness of arts 



lubbock's facts against-his theory. 177 

once practised and of knowledge once pos- 
sessed, must inevitably have arisen among 
tribes driven into inhospitable regions. But 
there are other facts also referred to by Sir 
J. Lubbock himself, which show that there 
are cases in which we have proof of this 
process having actually taken place. Thus, 
in regard to the Eskimo, he quotes the case 
of a tribe in Baffin's Bay who "could not 
be made to understand what was meant by 
war, nor had they any warlike weapons."* 
No wonder, poor people ! They had been 
driven into regions where no stronger race 
could desire to follow them. But that their 
fathers had once known what war and 
violence meant, there is no more conclusive 

* "Prehistoric Times," p. 410. 
N 



178 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

proof than the dwelling-place of their chil- 
dren. So again, Sir J. Lubbock quotes the 
testimony of Cook in respect to the Tasma- 
nians, that they had no canoes. Yet their 
ancestors could not have reached the island 
by walking on the sea. Some of the tribes 
did not know how fire could be obtained if 
it were once extinguished.* Again, of the 
Australians, Sir J. Lubbock reminds us that 
in a cave on the north-west coast " tolerable 
figures of sharks, porpoises, turtles, lizards, 
canoes, and some quadrupeds," &c, were 
found ; and yet that the present natives .of 
the country where they were found were 
utterly incapable of realizing the most vivid 
artistic representations, and ascribed the draw- 

* " Prehistoric Times," pp. 354-5. 



THE ARGUMENT FROM IMPLEMENTS. 179 

ings in the cave to diabolical agency* In 

all these cases we have direct evidences of 

degradation or of forgetfulness, even since 

Man first reached the shores of those distant 

Islands, and we see how it could not fail to 

be so under the known effect of known cause 

upon the condition of our race. 

And now we can better estimate the value 

to be set on the arguments which have been 

founded on the rude implements found in 

the river drifts and in the caves of northern 

Europe. I, for one, accept the evidence 

which Geology affords that these implements 

are of very ancient date. I accept too the. 

evidence which that science affords, that these 

implements were in all probability the ice 

« 

* "Prehistoric Times," p. 348. 
N 2 



l8o PRIMEVAL MAN. 



hatchets and rude knives used by tribes 
which towards the close of the Glacial Age 
had pushed their way to the farthest limits 
of the lands which were then habitable. And 
what follows ? The inevitable conclusion is, that 
it must be about as safe to argue from those 
implements as to the condition of Man at that 
time in the countries of his Primeval Home, 
as it would be in our own day to argue 
from the habits and arts of the Eskimo as to 
the state of civilization in London or in Paris. 
For here I must observe that Archaeologists 
are using language on this subject which, if 
not positively erroneous, requires, at least, 
more rigorous definitions and limitations of 
meaning than they are disposed to attend 
to. They talk of an Old Stone Age (Pateo- 



THE "AGES OF ARCHAEOLOGY. l8l 

lithic), and of a Newer Stone Age (Neolithic) 
and of a Bronze Age, and of an Iron Age. 
Now, there is no proof whatever that such 
Ages ever existed in the world. It may be 
true, and it probably is true, that all 
nations in the progress of the Arts have 
passed through the stages of using stone 
for implements before they were acquainted 
with the use of metals. But knowledge of 
the metals must have arisen at very different 
epochs in different regions of the earth. In 
South Africa flint implements have lately 
been discovered in abundance, but over a 
large portion of that vast continent the 
knowledge and the use of iron seems to have 
been of very ancient date ; and I am in- 
formed by Sir Samuel Baker that iron ore is 



182 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

so common in Africa, and of a kind so easily 
reducible by heat, that its use might well be 
discovered by the rudest tribes. As a matter 
of fact, they are now all excellent workers 
in iron. Then again, it is to be remembered 
that there are some countries in the world 
where stone is as rare and difficult to get as 
metals. In them the use of stone imple- 
ments may imply even an extended com- 
merce. The great alluvial plains of Meso- 
potamia are a case in point. Accordingly, 
we know from the remains of the First 
Chaldaean Monarchy that a very high civili- 
zation in the arts of agriculture and of 
commerce co-existed with the use of stone 
implements of a very rude character.* This 

* Rawlinson's "Five Great Monarchies," vol. i. pp. 119, 120. 



TWO FUNDAMENTAL OBJECTIONS. 183 

fact proves that rude stone implements are 
not necessarily any indication whatever of 
a really barbarous condition. Assuming then 
that the use of stone has in all cases pre- 
-ceded the use of metals, it is quite certain 
that the same Age which was an Age 
of Stone in one part of the world was an 
Age of Metal in another. As regards the 
Eskimo and the South-Sea Islanders we 
are now, or were very recently, living in a 
Stone Age. And so it has been in all past 
times of which any record remains. The 
whole argument therefore which has been 
founded on flint implements, is an argument 
liable to these two fundamental objections, 
first that flint implements Sre a very un- 
certain index of civilization, even among the 



184 PRIMEVAL MAN. 



tribes who used them ; and secondly that 
they are no index at all of the state of 
civilization among other tribes who lived at 
the same time in other portions of the globe. 
The finding of flint implements for example, 
however rude, in England, or in Denmark, or 
in France, affords no evidence whatever of 
the condition of the Industrial Arts in the 
same age upon the banks of the Euphrates 
or the Nile. 

There is one argument of Sir J. Lubbock 
in favour of the Savage-theory, which I 
observe with as much astonishment as that 
which he expresses in reference to some of 
the arguments of Whately. Sir J. Lubbock 
says that some savages have been found who 
have no religion at all. Such, he argues*. 



RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE MAY BE LOST. 185 

was probably the condition of Primeval Mao r 
because he " feels it difficult to believe that 
any people which once possessed a religion 
would ever entirely lose it. ,, Surely, if there 
is one fact more certain than another in 
respect to the nature of Man, it is that he 
is capable of losing religious knowledge, of 
ceasing to believe in religious truth, and of 
falling away from religious duty. If by 
" religion " is meant the existence merely 
of some impressions of powers invisible and 
u supernatural " — even this, we know, can not 
only be lost, but be scornfully disavowed by 
men who are highly civilized. Nor does Sir 
J. Lubbock's comment upon this subject gain 
by the further explanation which he gives. 
He says that " Religion appeals so strongly 



lS6 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

to the hopes and fears of men, it takes so 
deep a hold on most minds, it is so great a 
consolation in times of sorrow and sickness, 
that I can hardly think any nation would 
ever abandon it altogether." There are two 
obvious replies to such reasoning: the first 
is, that many false religions do not answer 
to this description so far as regards their 
self-recommending and consoling power ; the 
second is, that neither does true religion 
answer this description to those who are 
corrupt and vicious. Belief in a God who is 
4< of purer eyes than to behold iniquity " is 
a belief which bad men may not have liked 
to cherish. As regards the first of these 
two replies, Sir J. Lubbock himself bears 
emphatic testimony to its force. In his work 



reply to lubbock's argument. 187 

on "Prehistoric Man/' speaking of the savage, 
he says,* "Thus his life is one prolonged 
scene of selfishness and fear ; even in his 
religion, if he has any, he creates for himself 
a new source of terror, and peoples the world 
zvith invisible enemies" Yes, and this is 
mildly stated. The most cruel and savage 
customs in the world are the direct effect 
of its " religions.'' And if men could drop 
religions when they would, or if they could 
even form the wish to get rid of those which 
sit like a nightmare on their life, there would 
be many more nations without a " religion " 
than there are found to be. But religions 
can neither be put on nor cast off like 
garments, according to their utility, or ac- 
* P. 484-.- 



PRIMEVAL MAN. 



cording to their beauty, or according to their 
power of comforting. Among the causes 
which have determined their form and cha- 
racter in different nations we must reckon 
the moral corruption of human nature. I 
am not speaking of this corruption in a 
dogmatic and theological sense ; I speak of 
it as an unquestionable fact, whatever be the 
history of its origin. By the corruption of 
human nature, I mean the undeniable fact 
that Man has a constant tendency to abuse his 
powers, to do what according even to his 
own standard of right or wrong he knows 
he ought not to do ; to be unjust and 
cruel towards others, and to fall into horrible 
and degrading superstitions. Human corrup- 
tion in this sense is as much a fact in the 



HUMAN CORRUPTION A FACT. 189 

natural history of Man as that he is a Biped 
without feathers. It is entirely independent 
of any belief, or any theory as to Man's 
original condition. Sir J. Lubbock's argu- 
ment implies that the tribes, if such there be, 
(which, by the way, is extremely doubtful) 
who are not known to have any ideas 
at all in respect to spiritual beings or to 
another world, are in a lower condition than 
tribes which have a "religion," however cruel 
and horrible its rites may be. According to 
this theory, even devil-worship would be a 
step in ascent towards "civilization" from 
the "utter barbarism" of Primeval Man. But 
this is a theory as contrary to reason as it 
is contrary to all the evidence we have on 
the history of Man. The farther we go back 



190 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

in that history the more clear become the 
traces of some pure traditions, and the rays 
of some primeval light. Such evidence as 
history and philosophy and criticism afford 
on the course of religious knowledge is not 
in favour of the doctrine of a gradual rise, 
but, on the contrary, of continuous corruption 
and decline. "If there is one thing," says 
Professor Max Muller, "which a comparative 
study of religions places in the clearest light, 
it is the inevitable decay to which every 
religion is exposed .... Whenever we can 
trace back a religion to its first beginnings, 
we find it free from many blemishes that 
affected it in its later stages."* One of the 
most ancient religions of the world is re- 

* " Chips from a German Workshop," vol. L, pref., xxiiL 



THE SANSKRIT VEDAS. 191 

presented in its earlier form in the Sanskrit 
Vedas, and the contrast between its doctrines 
and those of existing Hindooism is but a 
sample of the working of a great law which 
can be traced in every region of the world. 
This is no case confined to some little corner 
of the earth, or to some short period of time, 
or to some partial and accidental cause. It 
is the case of a religion which in all its 
branches embraces uncounted millions of the 
human race, and the history of which 
extends over more than 3,000 years. Nor 
is the sense in which corruption and decay 
are predicated of this religion at all vague 
or indefinite. It has become lower, ruder, 
more corrupt, — in its conceptions of the Divine 
Nature, — in its notions of acceptable worship, 



PRIMEVAL MAN. 



and in the social institutions which are con- 
nected with Belief. 

The truth is, that Man's capacities of degra- 
dation stand in close relation, and are pro- 
portionate, to his capacities of improvement. 
What faculty of the human mind lies nearer 
to the very centre of its highest life than 
the faculty of Imagination? Without it we 
could not interpret Nature, or form any 
conception of its laws, or feel their harmony, 
or understand their use. Without it we could 
not see the Abstract or read the Future. 
Without it we should be without motive to 
resist Impulse, or to maintain Conviction, or 
to rise to Duty. We could form no idea 
whatever of Religion. It would not be possible 
to desire the Unknown or to hope for the 



IMAGINATION. 193 



Unseen. And yet Pascal was not wrong 
when he placed this same faculty of Ima- 
gination at the very head of the "Deceitful 
Powers/' For it is, in truth, one of the most 
effective causes and instruments of Degrada^ 
tion. It is its function to give form and 
expression to all those vague emotions which 
arise inevitably out of contact between the 
mind that is in Man and the mind that is 
in Nature. These emotions are literally 
what the Poet calls them — "the blank mis- 
givings of a creature moving about in worlds 
not realized." But without Knowledge given 
or acquired, to guide the elements in Imagina- 
tion which are purely intellectual, and with- 
out virtue to control the elements which are 
chiefly moral, this " Superb Power," as Pascal 

O 



194 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

also most justly calls it, does terrible work 
indeed. It is the mother and the nurse 
of all the horrible inventions of Idolatry. 
Through its operation have arisen, from time 
to time, all the diabolical rites which have 
degraded, and do still degrade, so many 
tribes of men far below the level of the 
brutes. But irrational as the superstitions 
of heathen nations may appear to be, and 
even inconceivable in a Being who is capable 
of reason, it should never be forgotten that 
this is true only of the last developments of 
Idolatry, and is by no means true of its 
first beginnings. On the contrary, these are 
among the most natural of all spiritual 
temptations, and perhaps the most difficult 
to resist. The first of the Commandments 



ROOTS OF IDOLATRY. 195 

is of all others the most difficult to obey : 
"Thou shalt have no other Gods before 
Me." The dependence of the human mind 
on outward symbols, and then its tendency 
to identify the symbols with the concep- 
tions they represent — these are the roots of all 
Idolatry. The course of thought, in our own 
day, even among highly civilized and enlight- 
ened men, may well remind us how easy 
and how natural it is to lapse into systems 
of belief, which in their fundamental cha- 
racter are essentially Creature-worship. The 
fact is, that so far from there being any 
difficulty in understanding how spiritual truth, 
once known, could be ever lost, all obser- 
vation and experience prove that it is the 
most difficult of all things to maintain with 
O 2 



196 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

even tolerable purity any high standard of 
spiritual faith. A thousand tendencies from 
within, and from without, are perpetually at 
work to undermine, or to transform it. And 
then the awful correlations of Human Thought 
render it not only probable but inevitable that 
the first departures from the knowledge and 
the love of Truth, must end in wider and 
wider divergence from it. The infinite subtlety 
and ingenuity of Imagination will, when it 
is ignorant and corrupt amply account for 
the origin and growth of even the most 
degraded superstitions. This is a subject too 
extensive to be pursued here; but it could 
be shown that even among the South Sea 
Islanders, and other tribes who have been 
driven farthest from the original settlements 



HUMAN SACRIFICES. 197 

of Man, there were many religious customs 
of which those who practised them did not 
know the origin or the meaning, and which 
clearly indicated their derivation from an 
older, a more intelligible, but a forgotten 
faith. 

This is also eminently true of the religious 
rites and practices of some of the Hill tribes 
of India. A most curious and interesting 
account of human sacrifices by the Khonds, 
one of the Hill Tribes of Orissa, has been 
published by my friend, Major-General John 
Campbell, who has been mainly instrumental, 
under the Government of India, in the abolition 
of this horrid rite. The absolute rule that 
the victims must be procured by purchase, 
stands in unmistakeable relation to the only 



198 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

intelligible principle in the very idea of sacrifice, 
namely, the principle of self-sacrifice. 

Here for the present I must leave the 
subject. My chief object has been to show 
how little really depends on some of the 
arguments which have been put forth by 
both sides in this controversy, and to indicate 
what seems to me to be the true bearing of 
the facts which as yet have been clearly 
ascertained. I set little value on the argu- 
ment of Whately, that as regards the 
mechanical arts Man can never have risen 
"unaided." The aid which Man had from 
his Creator may possibly have been nothing 
more than the aid of a Body and of a Mind, 
so marvellously endowed, that Thought was 
an instinct, and Contrivance was at once a 



CONCLUSION. 199 



necessity and a delight. But I set still less 
value on the arguments of Sir J. Lubbock, 
that Primeval Man must have been born in 
a state of "utter barbarism," on the ground 
that this is the actual condition of the 
outcasts of our race, or that industrial know- 
ledge has advanced from small beginnings, 
or that there are traces of rude customs 
among many nations now highly civilized. 
None of these arguments afford any proof 
whatever, or even any reasonable presumption, 
in favour of the conclusion which they are 
employed to support : first, because along 
with a complete ignorance of the Arts it is 
quite possible that there may have been a 
higher knowledge of God, and a closer 
communion with Him ; secondly, because 



200 PRIMEVAL MAN. 

many cases of existing barbarism can be 
distinctly traced to adverse external circum- 
stances, and because it is at least possible 
that all real barbarism has had its origin in 
like conditions ; thirdly, because the known 
character of Man and the indisputable facts 
of history prove that he has within him at 
all times the elements of corruption — that 
even in his most civilized condition, he is 
capable of degradation, that his Knowledge 
may decay, and that his Religion may be 
lost. 



London : R. Clay, Softs, and Taylor, Printers. 



THE REIGN OF LAW. 

BY THE DUKE OF ARGYLL. 
Fifth and cheaper Edition, with additions. Crown 8vo. 6s. 



CONTENTS. 

i. The Supernatural. 

2. Law : its Definitions. 

3. Contrivance a Necessity arising out of the Reign 

of Law — Example in the Machinery of Flight. 

4. Apparent Exceptions to the Supremacy of Purpose. 

5. Creation by Law. 

6. Law in the Realm of Mind. 

7. Law in Politics. 
Notes and Index. 



OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 



Times. 



"A very able book, well adapted to meet that spirit of 
inquiry which is abroad, and which the increase of our know- 
ledge of natural things stimulates so remarkably. It opens 
up many new lines of thought, and expresses many deep and 
suggestive truths. It is very readable ; and there are few books 
in which a thoughtful reader will find more that he will desire 
to remember." 



OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 



Pall Mall Gazette. 

" This is the only formal attempt that we know of to dis- 
entangle the web of perplexity, suspicion, and doubt in which 
many religious minds of the day are involved, through the 
confusion of thought and phraseology from which few writings 
on scientific matters are free. The aim is lofty, and requires 
not only a thorough familiarity with metaphysical and scientific 
subjects, but a breadth of thought, a freedom from prejudice, 
a general versatility and sympathetic quality of mind, and a 
power of clear exposition rare in all ages and all countries. 
We have no hesitation in expressing an opinion that all these 
qualifications are to be recognised in the Duke of Argyll, 
and that his book is as unanswerable as it is attractive." 



Spectator. 

"This is in its way a masterly book — not a book of many 
ideas, but of a few very ably and powerfully put, by a man 
who has^ a real and accurate knowledge of many departments 
of natural history. It is the first from any Cabinet Minister 
of standing on the philosophy of science, and it shows, we 
think, almost as large a power of thought and as strong a 
judgment within its sphere as any of Sir Cornewall Lewis's 
books, and more than many of Mr. Gladstone's. Nothing can 
be abler than the way in which the Duke of Argyll disentangles 
and illustrates the various uses of the word ' Law ' in its scien- 
tific sense, and shows how much it really means, what false 



OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 



meanings have been put upon it, and what are the scientific 
reasons for rejecting those false meanings. . . . The last 
chapter of all is an exceedingly thoughtful and masterly essay, 
on the extent to which natural law should be accepted as the 
guiding rule of politics. But the book is strong, sound, 
mature, able thought from its first page to its last." 



Morning Post. 

"The Duke of Argyll has released from the hazy pale of 
metaphysics, and placed in the broad light of practical philo- 
sophy, questions of vital import, which are closely associated 
with the progress and welfare of mankind." 



Saturday Review. 

"The conflict, real or supposed, of theology with science is 
indeed, in all its aspects, an urgent topic demanding a more 
complete treatment than it has yet received in this country 
at the hands of the religious philosopher. That question, with 
which the Duke of Argyll deals, is just the point which pious 
and practical minds find the most perplexing. Many persons 
who are too busy or too little metaphysical to be aware of the 
deeper speculative difficulties which beset our conception of 
God and Nature, and their mutual relations, will be glad to 
have the suggestions of a thoughtful mind on such a practical 
point as, e.g., How is the unchangeableness of natural law 



OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 



compatible with the religious belief that God hears and answers 
prayer? The Duke of Argyll takes up the mental position 
which alone can promise usefulness in the treatment of such 
a question. He has no reserves on the side of science. He 
has no hesitation on the side of religion. It is extremely rare 
to find the reconcilement attempted in popular books without 
an inclination to one side or the other. The religious people 
too often write with a secret disbelief in science, which is 
in fact imperfect comprehension, but looks like fear of truth. 
The man of science, in his contempt for popular and pulpit 
theology, often writes with a disregard of those great truths 
which are the indispensable complement of rational thought 
on the system of the universe. In the present writer we miss 
neither of the required faculties." 

Examiner. 

* ' A very remarkable volume, which must certainly have 
some good result [ in clearing the ground for that ( advance of 
truth which, it is evident, the Duke of Argyll desires to pro- 
mote even to the prejudice of the venerable forms and coverings 
of truth which are so dear to him." 



British Quarterly Review. 

"The excellency of the Duke of Argyll's book is that he 
does not present himself as either philosopher or theologian, 
but as familiar enough with the lore of both to enable him 



OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 5 

fairly to deal with the arguments of both. He is, moreover, 
perfectly successful in the maintenance of a judicial feeling ; 
he conceals no fact of science, he surrenders no fact of revelation. 
He believes in the teachings of science as the true exposition 
of the material world ; he accepts the teachings of revela- 
tion as the true exposition of the moral world ; and if he has 
not always succeeded in establishing the harmony which he 
seeks, it is because of imperfect demonstration, [and not by 
unjustifiable surrender on either side. The volume is full of 
vigorous thinking, and most successfully mediates between 
science and theology." 

Westminster Keview. 

1 ' A really valuable contribution to science, and conciliatory 
in the best sense of the term. " 

The London Review. 

" 'The Reign of Law' bears the stamp of original thought, 
of accurate acquaintance with the most advanced science, and 
of a not unsuccessful intrepidity in combating the positions of 
Darwin, Comte, and Mill. Nor is the statesman lost in the 
philosopher : the closing chapter on Law in Politics entitles its 
noble author to a very high place among the philosophical 
politicians of the day. Difficult questions such, e.g., as the 
principle of combination of labour, are not only discussed 
with more than judicial impartiality, but their functions and 



OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 



uses, their dangers and tendencies, their connection with 
other principles in the individual mind and the system of 
Society are examined and brought out with a profoundness of 
thought and width of view, which remind us of some of the 
best pages in the writings of Sir Cornewall Lewis. . . . We 
have said enough, we hope, to recommend this book to all 
intelligent readers. From many scientific works now-a-days 
we rise with something of depression and bewilderment on 
our mind. The Duke of Argyll's book leaves exactly a contrary 
impression. " 



The Chronicle. 

"The Duke of Argyll's 'Reign of Law' is written with 
admirable clearness. His criticism of Mr. Darwin in the 
chapter entitled ' Creation by Law ' is a model of perspicacity 
and neatness." 



The Illustrated Times. 

" We have experienced the greatest delight in reading the 
* Reign of Law.' That part of the work which relates to 
birds is as interesting as a fairy tale. The style of his Grace 
(to say nothing here of his thought, of which others have 
spoken words of admiration certainly not too strong) often 
runs into poetry ; and it has everywhere that indescribable 
not-too-much-ness which is always the cachet of high-class work." 



OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 



The Guardian. 

"The Duke of Argyll has produced a book which would 
do credit to the calmest and most disengaged philosopher. 
He has set out his views in lucid and eloquent words, and ex- 
plained and adorned them with a wealth and accuracy of illus- 
tration which could only be poured forth from the treasures of 
a well- stored and highly cultivated mind. And we think, also, 
that he has made a real contribution towards the solution of 
the great problem which he undertakes." 



The Daily News. 

"The Duke writes with great ease and power and much 
metaphysical acuteness, often with no little eloquence, and 
always with evident knowledge of his subject." 



Blackwood's Magazine. 

"The 'Reign of Law' is in all respects a remarkable 
book. . . . The chapter on the 'Flight of Birds' is among 
the happiest of the kind we have ever met with. We shall 
henceforth watch the flight of the sea-gull with additional 
interest. . . . The essay appeared originally in that very 
spirited periodical, Good Words, and it is highly creditable to 
that magazine that it should give its readers a composition of 
this sterling character." 



OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 



Glasgow Herald. 

"It is written in a manly, dignified spirit, is never dull, and 
frequently rises into true eloquence. Especially is it notable for 
clearness of definition and exactness of illustration. The author 
indeed is unsparing in his denunciation of those who, writing 
or speaking on scientific subjects, use vague terms which may 
be understood in more senses than one, and thus lead to uncer- 
tainty or confusion of mind. With this fault he cannot himself 
be charged. The abstruse questions which he takes up are 
popularised and made interesting by the use of studiously simple 
language, which must' be understood by any one of ordinary 
intelligence, and in short there is throughout the book a healthy, 
invigorating tone of thought which must recommend it to every 
reader." 

X Literary Churchman. 

' ' Nothing can be more interesting than the way in which the 
flight of birds is analysed to show the wondrous play and 
counterplay of the contrivances by which the laws of Nature 
are adjusted to work out the Creator's purpose. Nothing can 
be better than the vivid details by which the rich plumage of 
birds are described to establish that 'mere beauty and mere 
variety for their own sakes' are objects sought as independently 
in the works of Nature as in the works of Man." 



STRAHAN & CO., Publishers, 56, Ludgate Hill. 



